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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25332949">For our sins</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/KingLilith/pseuds/KingLilith'>KingLilith</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>AU, Death, Fighting, Plot Twists, Politics, The Deathly Hallows, Time Travel, Violence, World Travel, attempted magical realism, proper tags would spoil the surprise, stuck in the past-ish, world building</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 04:55:43</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>30,489</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25332949</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/KingLilith/pseuds/KingLilith</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>It took Harry far longer than it should have to realise that he had been transported to a different world. Granted, he thought he had been merely transported back in time, which was the logical conclusion to come to when you were suddenly displaced during an incident with someone who wanted to re-invent the time-turner.</p><p>Arriving in a different world with nothing but the clothes on his back leaves Harry scrambling to find ways to make money and survive this new world, and this time the trouble that he finds himself in might be entirely of his own devising.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>93</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Arriving and Surviving</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I should be finishing my other HP fic on here... which I promise I will do! Just, uhm, enjoy this in the meantime.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It took Harry far longer than it should have to realise that he had been transported to a different world. Granted, he thought he had been merely transported back in time, which was the logical conclusion to come to when you were suddenly displaced during an incident with someone who wanted to re-invent the time-turner. He spent some time freaking out over suddenly being in the seventeenth century, so he thought he could be forgiven for taking three days to notice that there were in fact two moons in the sky.</p><p>After seeing (and freaking out over) that, some of the other difference between this world and Harry’s own become glaringly obvious. A centaur with wings frowned at him for dawdling on the sidewalk, and there is a loud party of werewolves, most likely a family that had come here all the way from Scotland if the matching colours on their kilts were anything to go by, of which the children turned into wolves and back again as they played a game just there on the street in full daylight, and no one seemed to care.</p><p>It is only when Harry stands in front of his favourite grocery store in Diagon and sees they are selling several vegetables he has never seen in his life (amongst which a bright pink root that the advertisement claims is excellent for bone growth) that Harry starts to accept he might really not be in his own word anymore instead of just displaced in time. That, or this is a pretty inspired hallucination.</p><p>Harry buys some of the root, and then immediately regrets it. The money in his pocked is now all he possesses in the world, so while the prices at the store tell him that his money will stretch a lot further than it would back home, he best be careful. Well, not all he possesses. He has the clothes on his back and the Deathly Hallows, because of course those would follow across worlds, why in the world would the elder wand and resurrection stone stay behind when they could reappear wherever Harry was and give him a heart attack while they were at it.</p><p>With a sigh Harry turns around, biting into to root and scrunching up his nose at the strange flavour. It was getting dark, so he best find a place to stay for the night.</p><p>He does find one, but is chased from there early in the morning, and is taught a lesson in spectacle care when in his haste to put them on a move away from the angry people one of the lenses cracks and refuses to be completely mended again, even with the assistance of the Elder wand.</p><p>As Harry quickly finds out, it is pretty hard to make a living when you’re dropped into a different world unannounced. He had managed to make the galleons he had with him stretch as far as possible, but after nearly a month he was all out. The crux of the matter is, as Harry had found out the hard way, that he doesn’t have any papers. It isn’t even about OWL of NEWT scores, no, a birth-record or anything else that he might use to prove his citizenship was what is needed. No papers means no job, no job means no money and no money means that he ends up going hungry and cold, thinking wistfully about not only the friends he might never see again but also the vault full of gold he left behind.</p><p>The lack of papers was the first big setback, the second was that his skills leant heavily towards war, and any job involving those skills that he could do without having papers was not exactly the kind he was comfortable with when it concerned innocent people. His lack of funds drives him to the less savoury parts of the wizarding world early on in his stay, so he learns rather quickly who to talk to if he wants to relive his ‘breaking into Gringotts’ days. He tries to keep his ears open for more palatable options than ‘go this place, kill this man, and don’t ask questions’. But he wasn’t the only one interested in that kind of work, and the less problematic jobs got snatched up rather quickly by more well-liked and better-established members of the backstreets.</p><p>Hunger makes it hard to think and even harder to hold any moral high ground. If any of the richer people he encounters misplace a few coins… well, they surely won’t miss them. Navigating his way through this world is harder than it looked at first glance. Accidentally starting a fight because he didn’t greet someone the right way, not knowing where to find public toilets, or how to discern someone’s social status from the state of their bowler hat, are all things Harry learns how to do right the hard way.</p><p>He doesn’t really succeed in assimilating with the culture, and in return it is very hard to find someone who is willing to look past all his oddities and help a bit. Friends and even acquaintances are hard to come by in this kind of environment, and Harry knows the situation is getting pretty dire when even the local Hags scoff at him and move away without even trying to steal his blood or fingernails. He must truly look pathetic if even they leave him alone.</p><p>*</p><p>Harry sometimes wonders if the people here could feel he didn’t belong, and acted on that feeling as well. The people in the areas he frequents these days don’t have much to lose in the first place... or perhaps he just looks like he’d be easy to rob. Most of these people are uneducated and relied on innate skills (Harry was very glad he could resist the thrall of Veela and Vampires as well as he could), additional weaponry or intimidation tactics. So far a real fight hadn’t been necessary for Harry to convince people to leave him alone, the most he had to do was a few well-placed curses when some kind of Aswang got violent when Harry wouldn’t give her his toes. It seemed, however, that some violence would be in his immediate future this time.</p><p>He hadn’t meant to get in a feud with a gang member, he had been very careful not to in fact, but it seemed that starvation made people do crazy things, and this morning Harry had won out on some fish over Ralph, one of the guys he knew was pretty high up in the ranking of some minor gang. It had been a small scuffle for the fish, the kind people here got into every day, except that Ralph was a cruel and proud sort of man, and Harry had known even as he had glutinously swallowed down part of the fish that retribution would be in his future. No way a man like Ralph would let an outsider like him show him up like that.</p><p>When Harry was carefully herded to the empty warehouse later that evening, it took him less than a second to work out what was going on, even if his brain was just working on fumes at this point. This was an excellent place for an ambush, and Harry could already feel the elder wand stir at his side in anticipation.</p><p>“Hello scarface, what a surprise to see you here. Except not really.” A nasally voice said from behind Harry. He knew that if he turned around he’d see the pock ridden face of one of the minor gang members, he also knew that turning around would be a mistake, since the bigger threat was right in front of him. And indeed, after a short pause a tall, plump man stepped out from a few stacked crates, idly twirling his wand.</p><p> “A stranger in these parts I hear.” The man made an exaggerated tutting noise and stepped a bit closer, in what Harry though was supposed to be a threatening manner, though it was a rather pathetic attempt at it if Harry was honest. Then again, most people’s threatening manner did not have to measure up to that of Voldemort, so Harry supposed someone else might have felt intimidated. “If your speech alone hadn’t given you away, it would have been your manner. I have heard you’ve been rather… rude.” Behind the man several figures stepped out from the shadows, and while Harry couldn’t see it he knew behind him the same was happening. One of the figures in front of Harry broke loose from the shadows and stepped forward, until they were standing right behind the leader of this little gang. Harry immediately recognised Ralph, and the way the man was grinning clearly indicated his pleasure in doing to Harry what he had threatened to earlier in the day.</p><p>“But it seems my manners have been rather remiss myself, let me introduce myself; my name is Halfard Whitleson, it is a pleasure to meet you.” The man gave a mocking bow and then raised an eyebrow when Harry just stayed silent, not reacting at all. “Now, tell me stranger, what is your name.”</p><p>“Harry.” Was all he was willing to say. Starvation made him slow, and he wasn’t about to waste any precious energy or brainpower on unnecessary squabbling when there was a fight close at hand. He was sure that most people would know a lot about this man from the way his cap was perched, his buttons fastened, or his watch hung from his vest, but Harry didn’t know and therefore didn’t really care. He cared about walking out of here alive and anything else was a waste of brainpower.</p><p>“A man of few words I see. Nobody ever told you it’s polite to speak with three words to a superior? ‘Yes please, Sir’ should be part of anyone’s vocabulary. No? What a shame. Then I guess the privilege now falls to me to be the one to teach you some manners.” Halfard didn’t wait to finish his sentence before he threw the first curse, which Harry calmly sidestepped. He looked at it as the magic flew by and hit something behind him.  A bone-breaking curse. They clearly weren’t going to be playing around if that was the opening shot.</p><p>Then there were several spells from behind and someone threw a knife, much to Harry’s hilarity. His laughter must have thrown them off, or perhaps it was because he hadn’t retaliated yet while clearly in possession of a wand, because there was a short pause.</p><p>“So, I guess this is the last chance for you to back off and leave here with your life.” Harry said slowly, taking stock of the situation after his chuckles died down again. He didn’t want to kill or even hurt any of these people, but if it was between them or him, the choice was very easy. There were sneers and scoffs from several sides and Halfard lifted his wand again, but before any magic could be set loose Harry straightened, elder wand singing in his hand.</p><p>The fight was over quickly, and Harry doubted the elder wand had been necessary for it. These people clearly weren’t trained and only knew a limited amount of magic. None of their spells had been very powerful either, and it was only the ones that had run away in time that survived the encounter.</p><p>Harry stood in thin layer of mud that coated seemingly everything in these backstreets and looked down at the body of one of the men he had just killed, wondering if he could have bound him and used memory charms instead of taking it this far. They would have never left him alone, but maybe memory charms…</p><p>He was startled out of his morbid contemplation by a voice.</p><p>“What happened here?”</p><p>Harry turned around and shrugged when he saw a man standing there, looking at the various bodies on the floor of the warehouse more like they were an inconvenience than anything else. “I don’t know, some guy, Halfard the Witless I think, got into a brawl I suppose. Must have lost. I don’t think he was nearly as dangerous as he pretended to be.” Harry’s eye fell on one of the bodies and he sighed. “And I guess Ralphie wasn’t as tough as all that either, despite all his talk this morning.”</p><p>The man steps aside when Harry passes him, eying him warily, but Harry doesn’t really care, mind already on how he will manage to find his next meal.</p><p>Two days later he manages to talk himself into a job.</p><p>Just when he is most desperate, all out of money and having slept on the street for much too long, Harry manages to talk his way into a job at one of the bookstores in Knockturn. Which is good, because breaking into Gringotts again was starting to sound less crazy than it should have.</p><p>The elderly owner of the store has five eyes, and keeps at least one of them trained on Harry at all times. Harry isn’t sure why the man hired him or what he did different this time from all the other times he had tried to talk people into hiring him, but perhaps it had something to do with the way far less people had tried to steal from him or hassle him since his confrontation with Halfass the Witless.</p><p>The owner of the store is called Beld by most people, but Harry doubts that is his real name. Beld is thin, with hard eyes -all five of them- and speaks with an accent that Harry would guess is American, though the man only grunts when Harry asks about it. The pay is only one Sickle a week, but Harry gets to sleep in the tiny attic room, access to the employee bathroom, and one meal a day, which is much better than nothing.</p><p>Harry cries in relief the first night he spends on that lumpy mattress in the attic.</p><p>*</p><p>Hunger makes his head feel light and empty, and it is so hard to think properly when he feels like his head might lift off and float away at any moment. It makes him see things sometimes too, people who look so much like the ones he left behind in his own world. When he tried going to Diagonally again there had been a man who looked so much like that bastard Fudge that Harry had wanted to walk up and shake him about until he told Harry what he was doing in this world. Rationally Harry knows this is not the Fudge he knew, but his face as he leaned in to say something to someone with the same shade hair as the Malfoys had made Harry tremble at the likeness before he could turn himself away.</p><p>Nevertheless, Harry is now sweeping the floor, pondering the nature of always wanting more than you have. Don’t get him wrong, his job at the bookstore was great, but it was becoming clearer and clearer that he would not be able to survive on this alone in the long run.</p><p>One meal a day had sounded like heaven when he had nothing, but now, now it seemed like not nearly enough to survive on when doing such hard manual labour as working in a bookstore apparently required. It kept him from dying of hunger, but not from the empty feeling in his stomach or the lightness in his head. Harry had never considered himself a particular greedy person, but now all his thought revolved around things he wanted more of. More food, clothes, security, money, it seemed there was never enough of any of it.</p><p>He also wasn’t sure how long he would be able to sustain this job, Beld seemed surprised each day to find Harry still alive, and was a pretty hard boss to please, or even get to know. Harry had been unexpectedly, and unintentionally, clever when discussing the details of his employment, so it was pretty hard for Beld to let him go as long as he didn’t do anything wrong. And it wasn’t like he was a drain on the man’s finances. Harry now knew the bookstore had quite a nice turnover, even when just counting the things that were above board. Still, it was better to work on a backup plan than it was to just wait around until Beld fired him.</p><p>Harry softly breaths a sigh of relief when the Beld finally leaves for the meeting he’s been postponing for a few days now in favour of keeping an eye on Harry. It had taken a long time for the man to start leaving Harry alone, even for just a short time. In contrast it had taken Harry no time at all to fool the monitoring charms that the man left behind when he left. Harry casually flicks the elder wand to make sure the monitoring charms see nothing they shouldn’t, and then sets the broom down with a satisfying groan. If he had to hear “If you have time to lean, you have time to clean.” one more time, he might actually burn the whole building down. He isn’t sure how much more of his cleaning this place can take anyway.</p><p>Harry had always thought of himself as a hands-on learner, but from the few moments of time alone with the books he managed to snag these rare times alone in the store, he had learned much more than in all his months on the streets. Granted, he was looking into spells, something he was a lot better at than learning social customs, but still. He had been very glad to find out that there were only a few unknown spells in the standard spell books in this world, and the ones he didn’t recognise usually had a much better equivalent in the world that he came from. Besides, this was the seventeenth century, and while he had gotten used to the odd style of robes and manners people here had, the flowery language in which many of the books were written reminded him that it wasn’t so odd that some subjects were less advanced than he was used to.</p><p>There also seemed to be large areas of spells that were missing, or perhaps hadn’t been invented yet. Things such as warding, shielding and certain combat specific spells seemed yet to be in its infancy. Granted, he was mostly looking at defensive and offensive spells, so there might be areas in which this world was much more advanced, but so far the only area of study he had found that could be called ‘better’ were runes and rituals. In this world those two seemed to be entwined in a way Harry didn’t really understand, and he was hesitant to call it ‘better’ so much as that it was just different. He had never officially studied either anyway, so he wasn’t the best judge in the first place.</p><p>It was rather hard to judge from these books which topics were behind his own world and which were just… different.</p><p>*</p><p>Harry sighs and listens to the conversation around him carefully, while pondering how he could have gone such a large part of his life never thinking about money while now it is his main concern. The joys of adulthood he supposes. His job at the bookstore pays just enough to survive for now (he doesn’t need much. Apparently a childhood with the Dursley’s is good for something, he thinks darkly) but not enough to thrive, which is why he is here now, trying to find a not-so-terrible job amongst the holy-fuck-I’d-call-the-Aurors-if-I-thought-they’d-believe-me kind of work.</p><p>He’d tried going to the Auror’s once, and had almost gotten himself arrested for his troubles, so he isn’t very keen on repeating that experience.</p><p>The one Sickle a week he earns working for Beld is barely enough to make up the two meals a day that don’t come with his job, let alone do anything else with. He is still wearing the exact same clothes he had on when he was dropped here, and while he doesn’t care but about the looks his jeans keep getting (fashion here was what one might expect from a seventeenth century other-world; all billowy and linen. Or frills and lace for those who could afford it) but he’d really like a second pair of underwear, cleaning spells would only go to a certain point.</p><p>The lack of money makes him feel stupid sometimes. He never really worried much about money before, the war seemed much more important than just about anything else back in his Hogwarts days, and afterwards it hadn’t really been a concern either.</p><p>And now, here he was, hoping that somebody has gotten themselves kidnapped so he could make some gold. Feeling like a scumbag for sinking this low didn’t really make him less willing to take any work coming his way though. He had done a search and rescue a few weeks ago, but because it was his first time had not negotiated well enough and been left with far less pay than he had hoped for. This time he hopes to walk away with more.</p><p>He’s almost ready to give up for the evening when he hears something interesting, mostly because it’s not interesting to the others hanging around this place looking for similar but more seedy work than Harry. A woman, wearing what Harry recognises as middleclass clothing and looking rather out of place for it, is laughed away because she only has five galleons to offer for retrieving an object that has no monetary or magical value.</p><p>“Go home little lass, this in’t the place for ya. Defn’tly not if ya think any of us is willing to stick our neck into a place tha’ has goblin wards. An’ for a measly five galleon.” A man Harry only knows as Bee says rather gruffly, shaking his head.</p><p>“Five galleons is more than you usually make in a day, and those wards should be a piece of cake for someone like you.” The woman bravely tries a few more times, but is ignored and eventually droops off, limping back into the direction of Diagon Ally.</p><p>Harry manages to catch up with her almost right away, the woman clearly having something wrong with at least one of her legs and not going very fast.</p><p>“I’d be willing to help.”</p><p>The woman looks surprised and then glances over him with an assessing eye. “Can you actually do it?” She uses a rather non-judgemental tone that Harry appreciates, and he nods in return.</p><p>“Sure, as long as you pay me fifteen galleons.” He says, knowing very well this woman doesn’t have that kind of money. But it is a good opener for the negotiation and this time Harry doesn’t plan on being more generous than he has to be.</p><p>He doesn’t ask the woman’s name, nor she his, but he walks away with a promise of seven Galleons, four Sickles and a two flower sacks worth of non-expired food of her choice upon delivery of her mother’s wedding ring.</p><p>*</p><p>The wards that hide the cottage in which the woman said the ring was located are laughably easy to take down, especially for someone who’s previous case of breaking and entering was Gringotts. Perhaps people here who don’t have the advantage of all his future knowledge would have a harder time, Harry mushes as he silently makes his way through the rooms in search of the bedroom and vanity in which the woman said the ring was hidden.</p><p>There really isn’t much in the way of valuables in the cottage itself, clearly people having vacated this place a while ago with little left behind. Nevertheless, Harry shrinks and pockets two vases that he could perhaps repair and sell, as well as some dented cutlery that he might be able to shine up and charm in amusing ways. He contemplates the few furniture pieces that are left behind, but quickly determines they are too broken and termite ridden to be salvaged.</p><p>Finding the correct room and the vanity is rather easy, though finding and extracting the ring itself takes a few spells, the thing having been well hidden indeed.</p><p>The ring itself is a cheaper metal with a thin layer of silver, Harry can see when he has the thing in his hands. There are no special spells or anything else hidden on it, nor is it of great monetary value. It seems that the woman had really been telling the truth when she commissioned him.</p><p>The ring is light in his hands and Harry throws it up a few times only to catch it again. It feels so different from the resurrection stone, the only other ring he had ever really held before. The thought makes him reach for this warded pocket, where the ring and cloak sit, shrunken and dormant, waiting for him to use them.</p><p>Letting his hand fall back to his side Harry lets his eyes roam over the dilapidated dressing table one last time before turning around and leaving. He had some Galleons to pick up.</p><p>*</p><p>The money and extra food he makes of the job and the things he took from the cottage last him almost two months, which is when he must go back to one meal a day again, waiting for the next opportunity to make a little more again.</p><p>He had used some of the extra money to buy a second pair of underpants and some raw iron to fashion into something of protection against thievery, the amount of time his invisibility cloak had almost been nicked, even with the kind of protections he put on it, was truly astounding. It had been a lot better since he’d started working at the shop, and maybe he was looking less like an outsider because even pickpocket attempts had dropped a lot since around then.</p><p>The iron he had bought was considered very hard to enchant in this world apparently, so he had gotten a good deal on it. But never the less, the money had run out sooner than he had hoped for. Long-term planning was hard when your head was about to drift away, and your stomach seemed to have a hole in it, but during boring tasks at the shop or laying in bed trying to stave of sleep a little longer, Harry did try. He doesn’t know when exactly going back to his own world had stopped being an option, but he doesn’t really have the energy to think about it. His only real option left seems to be what he is trying to do now; selling the skills he learned during the war.</p><p>He is sitting with his head in his hands, listening to his growling stomach and the conversation around him, contemplating the inconvenience of not wanting to kill innocent people when he overhears a conversation. Or, well, part of a conversation.</p><p>“Oh shut up, he never.” A consternated looking hag says, waving her hand in another woman’s face. “I read his palm once, I would have known if he was.”</p><p>“No, it’s true! Wearing fancy clothes and everything.” The woman replies. She’s wearing a strange grey cape and is admirably putting up with the hands the hag tries to wave in her face again. “I mean, the McLaren’s are pretty well off and he was wearing their family crest, you know they’d never stand for that if he wasn’t part of the family.”</p><p>“Sounds fake, but okay.” The Hag scoffs still somewhat disbelievingly. “If that’s true then why don’t we all do the thing, study, whatever, at Mungo’s that you say he did, and get ourselves some free stuff from the fancy buggers.”</p><p>“Cause not all of us are related to the McLaren Family, as you well know, Ata. Just cause he’s lucky enough to be somebody’s bastard doesn’t mean they’d take in anyone. The whole point of the thing at Mungo’s is that they find out what’s hidden in your blood, heritage being one of the easier things those quacks can find apparently. They’re skirting a fine line doing it from what I hear, blood magic is apparently only legal when <em>they </em>do it. I mean, yeah it’s different from the kinda stuff I practice, but come on, it’s all blood in the end isn’t it.”</p><p>The hag, who is called Ata apparently, snorts. “Hmpf, rich people. Imagine being able to afford taking in an idiot like that, I bet he’ll blow whatever they give him on booze within a day. They’ll be sorry they gave him those fancy clothes after a week, you mark my words.”</p><p>The woman shrugs, and from the corner of his eyes Harry can now see that what he had previously though was a rather strange cape might actually be a set of wings. “Maybe, but at least he has a cushy place to live, and that makes things a lot easier you know.”</p><p>“True, true, well if what you say has any merit then I might look into doing it myself as well.”</p><p>“You don’t have any blood for them to play with,” The feathered woman says, clearly annoyed that the hag is still doubting her story.</p><p>It does make thinks a lot easier if you have a cushy place live, Harry thinks as he stops listening now that the conversation turns to other topics and mulls over what he’s heard. He had heard something before about Jonas being a McLaren bastard, but hadn’t connected it with the latest Saint Mungo’s study. The hospital was rather notorious in these parts for doing different kinds of studies all the time, as they always liked to ask the poorest of the population to partake in them. It hadn’t taken Harry long to figure out that only the truly desperate or suicidal participated in them, merely ending up lobotomised was one of the better outcomes from what Harry had seen.</p><p>But perhaps… It wouldn’t be too hard to pass himself off as a Potter cousin, would it?</p><p>The fake name he was using, Harry Evans, and backstory he had created – but only rarely had to use-, would work quite well for that sort of thing. He had kept his story as close to the truth as he could manage, which made it easier to remember. He’d told the few people who had asked that his mum had been a muggleborn witch, but that he didn’t know who his dad was, his mum did but she never told him.</p><p>When asked he told them, no, he doesn’t know why he never got his Hogwarts letter, but he might have officially been born in Ireland, so maybe that’s why. They moved a lot when he was a kid and his mom died young. More than that he never had to make up, since people didn’t seem to care all that much about the life of just another street rat.</p><p>Which all would work well in this situation and should allow enough space for him to be some long lost or bastard potter cousin.</p><p>It isn’t really a hard decision, Harry thinks later, when he lays in bed. His only other option is taking those jobs in which he would have to hurt people that might be innocent in order to earn a few galleons.</p><p>It’s a very easy choice.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Experimental application</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>There are several other people there, all poor and somewhat hopeful looking. The study was much more popular than usual from what Harry could see, and the witch he hands his slip to when it’s his turn seems to think the same.</p>
<p>“Another one for the A54 study? Down the hall and to the left, there will be a member of staff there to explain further.” She says shooting Harry a look full of pity for some reason.</p>
<p>The glare of the white halls hurts his head, and the strong smell of cleaning spells isn’t helping much as Harry makes his way to the room the Witch had indicated. There is a young wizard in pale robes who waves him inside with a wooden smile and barely disguised disgust. The room looks like one of those meeting halls, the kind with nice chairs, white walls and a large, obviously magical, window that changed scenery every few minutes.</p>
<p>Harry perches awkwardly on the edge of one of the chairs as he waits for the rest of the prospective candidates to file in. From the looks around him he wasn’t he only one who felt a bit out of place in this clean and bright environment, though some hid it better than others.</p>
<p>There isn’t much talking going on, and Harry doesn’t really feel like it either. A lot of people here either know or distrust each other anyway, he thinks while casting a critical eye around the room, making sure to place himself in an easily defensible position. The only chatting that is going on centres mostly around people trying to convince each other, or perhaps themselves, that they are related to some pureblood family. “E’vryone always said I look jus’ like Lord Ogden.” A man with very little teeth left says.</p>
<p>It doesn’t take too long at all until almost all the chairs are filled and a much too happy looking young mediwitch closes the doors and takes position in front of the room.</p>
<p>“Excuse me, excuse me.” She says once she has given the room a once over, smiling widely. “If you could settle down as well, Sir, we can get started. Thank you.” She cheerfully claps her hands once and then keeps them clasped in front of her as she nods brightly at the room, making her blonde ponytail bounce. “My name is Cecily and I will be the one helping you through the process of entering the A-fifty-four study today. We are very happy to see that there are so many interested in this study, usually we have trouble finding more than two candidates, so we are very grateful for your interest. Now, let me first start with explaining that to partake in this study there are some requirements that need to be met.  Today you will receive a full health scan that will make clear if you are qualified to enter the study, if you are you can come back tomorrow when an introduction will be given to the participants that can enter.”</p>
<p>She picks up a piece of parchment from the table in front of her and reads from it as she continues speaking. “We will check you over to make sure there are no prohibitive hereditary curses, weaknesses of the mind, or addictions of any kind. For a more complete overview of what would be considered a prohibitive condition for taking part in this trial you can ask the healer or mediperson attending you. Any questions so far?” She looks around cheerfully, and doesn’t seem to notice at all that most of the people in the room had suddenly become rather glum when she mentioned the conditions for taking part. Harry didn’t doubt that most of the people here would not be eligible.</p>
<p>“I’ve go’ a question.” A woman with crazy hair and even crazier eyes says from somewhere on the left of Harry. “When are we getting paid? We ain’t doin’ this out the goodness of our heart ya know.”</p>
<p>There is a lot of agreeable grumblings at that, and one man even starts slapping the table in emphasis. In emphasis of what Harry isn’t sure, did these people really think they’d get money at any time other than at the very end?</p>
<p>Cecily however seems to not notice the commotion and continues talking in that way she has that makes it seem like every sentence has an exclamation mark at the end of it. “That is an excellent question! But, unfortunately, only participants that will actually take part in the study will be compensated. We are just here today to see if you eligible to take part at all.” There is a lot of grumbling and murmuring at that, but Cecily still doesn’t seem to notice. “Now if there are no further questions for now I will ask you to sit tight and wait until your name is called so a healer can see you.” She peers at the parchment in her hand. “Let’s start with… Mister Abel. Oh, it seems you have forgotten to write a last name, let amend that, shall we.”</p>
<p>The same crazy eyed witch that spoke earlier pushes her chair back with a lot of noise. “That’s me. And I don’t know no last name.”</p>
<p>For the first time Cecily looks anything other than cheerful. “Ah, my apologies Miss Abel, let’s talk in the healer’s office.” She motions for the woman to follow here and lets the door swing shut behind them before Harry can hear more of their conversation.</p>
<p>It takes a long time before Cecily returns to call out the second name, and by then Harry has settled in the chair and is resting. Not sleeping, he didn’t dare to do that with these people around, but it still was good to just kick back and sit still for a moment. Many others around the room clearly had the same idea, though some were wandering around, touching everything in sight or pacing up and down the room. Harry didn’t really care as long as they didn’t bother him, and he settled in for a long wait.</p>
<p>He was almost dozing by the time his name is finally called, and it takes him a second to react to it. Despite what must also be a long shift for her, Cecily’s smile hasn’t diminished a bit as she leads Harry to the Mediwizard that will see him, and surprisingly sincerely wished him luck.</p>
<p>The Mediwizard is a young man with an upturned nose who’d clearly would like to be anywhere but here. He doesn’t introduce himself and instead immediately set about confirming the details Harry had written down earlier that day and casting diagnostic charms.</p>
<p>“Under weight, but nothing that prohibits taking part in the trial.” The man eventually says with a slight sneer and then turns to pick up a leaflet from somewhere. “Can you read? This tells you everything you need to know.”</p>
<p>“I can read.” Harry answers, not caring much about the condescending tone.</p>
<p>The Mediwizard squints his eyes a bit, clearly not trusting Harry to actually understand what was written. “You are to report to the front desk tomorrow at 10 o clock sharp with the green slip I will give you. You cannot bring any possessions with you when you enter the trial and anything you enter the hospital with shall be locked away until the end of your stay here. You will be given an explanation of what will happen during your time here and a contract to sign, once you have signed there is no going back.” He peers at Harry until he nods his understanding and then continues, “For the duration of the trial you will be staying in the research facility, and there will be no contact with the outside world. There will be absolutely nothing you can take with you to the research facility, not even a wand if you have one.” He summarises the parchment he had given Harry broadly.</p>
<p>When Harry gets back to the book store late that night Beld seems both annoyed and relieved that Harry will be taking part in the trial, but he just grunts and after a short hesitation says Harry can come back if it doesn’t work out. Which was… much kinder than Harry had been expecting, and it blind-sights him a bit.</p>
<p>The rest of the night is spend making sure that the Hallows are properly hidden and freaking out over the fact he can’t carry wand. He feels surprisingly naked without the Elder wand and hopes the stupid thing won’t just apparate to him whenever he might be in mild distress. He knows enough wandless magic to get himself out of a tight spot, but it still feels odd to walk around without a wand. At least he knows that if something really does go wrong the Hallows will come immediately when called.</p>
<p>He sleeps very little that night and arrives at saint Mungo’s the next day a full hour early, nervous anticipation thrumming though him. He knows very little of the Potters in this world, only that the family is pretty large, and he’s trying to justify his actions to himself. Not that it will stop him from entering the study, he feels bad about lying like this, but not actually bad enough to be willing to starve to death.</p>
<p>When it’s ten to ten Harry finally walks up to the reception desk and gives the wizard sitting there his green slip. He is immediately waved towards a conference room, though a different, much smaller one this time. The only other person in the room is a tall and thin woman who looks seconds away from throwing up. She is clearly here to enter the trial as well and Harry smiles at her. When she just sneers back Harry shrugs and takes a seat, waiting for the other people to show up.</p>
<p>Except only one other person shows up, a man, younger than Harry who introduces himself as Bart, and who is much friendlier than the woman. Only a few moments after the man enters a harassed looking mediwizard enters and asks them to follow him.</p>
<p>They are led though the hallways of the hospital, and as they walk around portraits on the walls look at them with varying degrees of interest and pity. They are guided through several doors that say ‘personnel only’ and then a large archway that takes verification of the mediwizard’s magical signature to open. To say Harry was feeling on edge was a bit of an understatement.</p>
<p>He isn’t sure where he was expecting to be led after all that, but a small, rather dull looking office with Cecily in it wasn’t it. The mediwizard leading them just nods at Cecily and then disappears out of the door, leaving the three of them standing there awkwardly.</p>
<p>“Welcome to the Saint Mungo’s research facility.” Cecily says with a megawatt smile. “It is so good to see you again. Today we will be going over some of the details of the study and then sign a contract. Take a seat, take a seat.”</p>
<p>She conjures three rather uncomfortable chairs for them and Harry sits down on the left one gingerly, having no choice but to rub shoulders with the woman who sits next to him due to the size of the office, most of the floor space is taken up by an average sized desk that seems to be stuck full of colourful memo’s and notes. The only one that Harry can actually read the handwriting of upside down seems to be a grocery list.</p>
<p>The walls are beige and yellow alternatively in some sort of pattern that Harry can’t make out and any floor space not taken up by the desk is taken up by filing cabinets that line completely around the walls of the office, leaving rather little space for three people to stand, let alone sit.</p>
<p>“Well,” Cecily starts “we have a lot of ground to cover so let’s get started! Let me first make it clear that until you sign these contracts,” she waves to a small pile of parchments in front of her “you can still back out. Once you sign them however it because rather hard to end participation.”</p>
<p>“Yes, yes, we know. Just hurry up will you.” The woman next to Harry says with a glower.</p>
<p>Cecily just nods happily. “Indeed, let me just find… ah, here it is.” She plucks a different parchment from her desk, and Harry can see ‘A54’ stamped on it with red ink before she holds it in such a way that her hands obscure the contents. “According to regulation I will now read you the parameters of the study as they have been laid out by the involved researchers in accordance with the Hospital Administration and current laws.”</p>
<p>She looks up for a moment to see if any of them have a comment to that yet but when she is met with silence her smile brightens another notch and she continues to read carefully. “Should one voluntarily participate in experiment A45, as in accordance with St Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries’ guidelines, the participant, hereafter called ‘the subject’ might experience some of the following things. Testing of the participant’s physical body in various states, including but not limited to-”</p>
<p>That means the tests will be invasive and painful, Harry extrapolates. Cecily’s smile doesn’t diminish at all when talking about the invasiveness of the test or how much pain they might induce on ‘the subject’, though it is worded cleverly. It’s strangely disturbing and comforting at the same time. Harry wonders how she does that. He isn’t fazed by the idea of pain much anyway, he doubts it will be worse than the Cruciatus.</p>
<p>“- that affect the production of blood and its components, such as blood cells, haemoglobin, blood proteins, bone marrow, platelets, blood vessels, spleen, and the mechanism of coagulation.” Cecily coughs slightly before continuing again. Harry has no idea how she managed to speak and smile at the same time, but she somehow did. “While the focus of the A54 experimental study will be the magically and medically searching for signs of familial heritage in the blood of the subject, any information gleaned will be taken into account in accordance with all current ministerial laws. The subject agrees that attending haematologists will also gather, store and process information on, but not limited to, hereditary diseases, mind magic -performed or received, creature lineage, permanent curses and any other magical or common afflictions, conditions and disorders that are found in the subject.”</p>
<p>Harry casts a glance at his right and sees both Bart’s and the woman’s eyes are glazed over, clearly not understanding a word of what Cecily is saying. He tears his eyes away from them and focusses back on listening, this will all be in the contract he knows, but it’s better to listen to it this way as well.</p>
<p>“During the study the subject’s health will be monitored as required by the research guidelines as accepted by the ministry. This will be expanded on by the collection of data on the subjects’ possible non-hereditary diseases, recording of magical and mundane injury, recording of any bodily abnormalities, and other data that might be found with diagnostic magic well as verbal questioning that conforms to all previously mentioned regulations.”</p>
<p>It is pretty hard to listen to what is actually said when having to wade through all the difficult wording. It’s twice as hard when trying to focus through the mist in his mind that is hunger, but Harry thinks he manages to stay focused pretty well.</p>
<p>“The free will of the subject will not be impeded or infringed upon in any way, shape, or form. This includes the uses of the following; Legillimency, Veritaserum or any other mind invasion technique, either known or experimental, mind expanding potions, truth potions of any kind, either known or experimental, and any other mind-bending or opening technique not specifically covered in the aforementioned.” Cecily continues merrily.</p>
<p>Her reading of the document ends with details on the fact the results will be made public and could be published in medical papers, which makes the two next to Harry blink awake again. He has no doubt that the possibility of being publicly announced some Lord’s bastard is why they are here in the first place. And so is he, if he’s honest.</p>
<p>“So, do you have any-“</p>
<p>“I don’t think you said anything about payment.” The woman next to Harry interrupts rudely. “That was a lot of hooey, but I didn’t hear galleons mentioned anywhere.”</p>
<p>“That is correct.” Cecily beams as if she has been waiting for this question her whole life. “This was only on the details of Study A54 itself, not the contract you will be signing. We will get to that in a moment.”</p>
<p>“Well, get to it then.”</p>
<p>Not noticing or perhaps not caring about the woman’s rudeness, Cecily indeed continues. She puts the parchment she had just read from aside and reaches for the stack in front of her. Giving the three of them each a copy of the contract.</p>
<p>“In addition to the details of study A54 itself the contract also mentions payment and consequences should a subject want to cease participating after signing it. Please read through it carefully and then sign each page where indicated at the right bottom hand. Mister Evans, Miss Woods, your names are not registered in the system, but that does not mean the contract isn’t binding, your magical signature will be registered as well and be considered valid proof should there be a dispute.”</p>
<p>Harry can feel the woman next to him, Woods apparently, gathering breath to ask about the money again, but before she can make a sound Cecily chirps an answer to her unasked question. “The matter of payment is discussed is Clause Four I believe.”</p>
<p>The two next to him immediately turn to that clause, but Harry starts from the top, taking care to read everything carefully and making sure he understands what is said. He has barely read a few sentences before Bert is already signing his copy and Cecily is calling a healer to escort him. He is halfway through the first page when Woods also signs, after which she follows a healer out as well. Harry doubts he will see either of them again.</p>
<p>While Harry reads carefully though the contract Cecily quietly hums and reads through her own documents. It takes a good hour before Harry feels ready to sign the thing. He knows he will essentially be signing himself over for the duration of the study, but that will be better than his other options. Here he will receive a roof over his head and food, and at the end of it he will claim to be a Potter cousin so he can lean a bit on his family while he gets his feet back under him. He will be fed, dry and warm, which already makes the situation better than his previous one.</p>
<p>He reaches for a pen and then quickly signs the contract before he can change his mind.</p>
<p>He is well aware that that there will be very little free will and that and that trying to back out now that he has signed will result in him having to pay the hospital, and legal proceedings that make his head spin faster than it already is. He is no stranger to pain or uncomfortable situations, and whatever study A54 might throw at him, he is pretty sure he can handle it.</p>
<p>“Ah, I was almost expecting you to walk out of here without signing Mr Evans! Now let me call an orderly who will take you to where you will be staying during the duration of the trial.” Cecily says happily, taking the signed contract from him and walking to the door to signal to someone in the hallway.</p>
<p>It doesn’t take long for a different young woman to appear, this one much grumpier than Cecily who tells him to call her ‘Mediwitch Allen’, and just motions Harry to follow her after a short hello and shaking his hand which she not so subtle wipes on her robes after.</p>
<p>He is led through only a few corridors before coming to a small cubicle where two wizards join them, both wearing the same white and pale turquoise coloured robes as mediwitch Allen, so they must be mediwizards too Harry guesses.</p>
<p>“Right, Mister Evans.” Allen says with a thin smile “Before entering the room you will be frequenting during your participation in this trial you will be washed and cleaned. These two gentlemen will assist you and at the same time apply several monitoring charms as well as conduct some preliminary tests. I will come to escort you once you when they are done.”</p>
<p>With a final nod to the two mediwizards, Allen steps back and leaves them alone, the sound the door makes when it shuts behind her feeling more final for Harry than signing the contract had done. Taking a deep breath he turns to the mediwizard on his right. The man has light brown hair and dark eyes, and looks, while unsmiling, much kinder than the blond haired wizard on his left.</p>
<p>“Let’s start the procedure, shall we. I am mediwizard Griffiths and this is mediwizard Becksteyn, the two us together with mediwitch Allen will most likely be the ones you have the most contact with during your stay here.” He shakes Harry’s hand with a serious face but kind eyes as he motioned to himself and Becksteyn. “Now, please remove all clothing and items you have on you and step into the shower.”</p>
<p>Harry feels some shame about undressing in front of these people, but there isn’t really anything for it. And they probably see more than a fair share of naked bodies in their profession anyway, Harry tries to rationalise as he tugs of his shirt and drops his pants.</p>
<p>Griffiths takes the items of clothing from Harry gingerly and places them in a small box that Harry knows he won’t see again until the day he walks out of here.</p>
<p>“Ah, your glasses too. Nothing can enter.” Becksteyn speaks up suddenly.</p>
<p>Oh merlin, how could he have been so stupid. Of course his glasses would count as an item as well. Only a few minutes into this stupid thing and there were already unforeseen disadvantages.</p>
<p>“I’m genuinely blind without them.” Harry tries half-heartedly, knowing that this wasn’t something they would budge on. He was already naked in front of two clothed people who would cast all sorts of charms on him, and now his glasses had to go too. Harry has to take a few deep breaths and concentrate on not summoning the elder wand right here on the spot.</p>
<p>“Sorry.” Becksteyn says, and surprisingly enough sounds like it too. “Nothing goes with you. But you can collect it in a few months when the trial is finished. In the meantime, we’ll be your guides.” He holds out his hand, but doesn’t try to take the glasses off of Harry himself.</p>
<p>With slightly shaky hands Harry lifts the glasses of his face and trust them in the direction of where Becksteyn’s waiting hands had been a moment before. Everything was blurry now, the way it always was without glasses, and he feels ten times as vulnerable as he had a moment before.</p>
<p>Harry almost jumps out of his skin when he feels a hand on his elbow. “Now let’s get you clean.” A blob with Griffiths’ voice says.</p>
<p>Being in the shower was better, he had to close his eyes anyway because of the water, and everything was warm and wonderful. Harry hadn’t had a shower since he had stumbled into this world, and it felt so good to have all the dirt and grime of the last few months wash off of him. It was almost good enough that he could forget he was in a research facility of Saint Mungo’s, participating in a trail that might be painful, or at least uncomfortable, just so he could pretend to be a Potter cousin and leach off of their money while he tried to get recognised as a citizen so he could get a job. Almost, because he could feel the tingle of magic on his spine and the scent of it in the air. There was definitely some magic in the water, and several times he could feel a spell that either Becksteyn or Griffiths send hit him.</p>
<p>When he had signed the contract he had agreed to being spelled, charmed or cursed without prior notification, and he doubted any of the mediwizards or healers would care to explain what they were doing or what the spells were for. Nevertheless, it was an exercise in control every time he felt something hit him. It was an odd game his body played between being very relaxed and enjoying the warm water and soap, and snapping to terribly alert when he felt a spell. He had known this would happen, but had counted on being able to see when someone would cast a spell. Even hearing the spells was a problem at the moment, the sound of water drowned everything else out, no matter how hard he strained his ears.</p>
<p>Eventually, after what seemed like an hour, he was deemed clean enough and the water shut off. He could hear the door of the shower being opened and then several drying spells being cast before there was a touch on his elbow and a blob helped him step out of the shower onto what had to be a towel or rug.</p>
<p>It seemed that now he was clean the mediwizards had less compunction about touching him, because with a short word of warning another hand was put on his arm, and then the pair of them helped him dress. He was glad they chatted a bit while they did so, because it was even more humiliating that he had expected. He clothes they gave him all looked like the same shade of grey to his blurry eyes, though for all he knew they had dancing ducks on them, but the fabric felt clean and soft on his skin, and so much better than anything he had worn in a long time.</p>
<p>After a pair of soft socks and slippers were put on his feet he was escorted though what he presumed was a hallway and into a room, where they stopped and one of the hands guiding him – Becksteyn he though – removed itself from his arm.</p>
<p>“Right.” Griffiths coughed somewhat awkwardly. “This will be your room for the duration of your participation in the trial. Pretty much all tests will be conducted in here as well, so it’s quite possible that you won’t be leave this room at all for the duration of your stay.”</p>
<p>“Okay.” Harry said a bit hesitantly, trying not to show his apprehension when Griffiths also took his hand away from his elbow. He felt a bit unsteady in the room that he could only see in vague contours. Three of the wall walls were all white from what he could make out, with only one rectangle of blue on his left. The right-hand wall was a mishmash of colours, shades of brown and silver being the most dominant, though Harry had to squint hard to make that out, most of it just blurring together. The room itself was mostly white as well, with a blob he thought might be the bed that was the same shade of grey as his new clothes. There was a blur of brownish colour against one of the walls. “What are the brown and blue things?” He asked softly, taking a small step into the room, trying to look like he was much more balanced than he felt.</p>
<p>“The blue door is to a bathroom, and the brown things are a table and chair.” Becksteyn said, sounding a bit impatient. “You’ll be in here for a while so there is plenty of time to explore. You will have the rest of today to get settled, and then the tests will begin tomorrow. If you have any questions just knock on the door and the wards will notify us.”</p>
<p>He sounded like he was about to leave so Harry quickly interjected pointing to the side of the room with all the colours. “What is on that side of the room”</p>
<p>“That is the kitchenette.” Griffiths said. “You can’t cook, and meals will be served three times a day, but you can drink whatever is in the fridge and there should be snacks and other things in there.”</p>
<p>Harry was so distracted by the thought of food and trying to make out the details of the kitchen he barely cared that that both mediwizards were extracting themselves from the room and left him to his careful foray into the world of blobs.</p>
<p>Cautious steps and a bit of wobbling had him taking of his slippers and socks to better feel the floor beneath his feet. He managed to shuffle over to the kitchen and almost sighed in relieve when he felt his hands close around edge of the countertop. Feeling his way around and a lot of squinting had him unearthing a bowl of fruit, from which he took an apple from (at least it felt like one) and took a big bite of. He could feel how fresh it was, the juices on his tongue and the tang of it in his nose as he chewed as slowly as he could make himself.</p>
<p>Once the apple was gone it took more willpower than it had ever taken him to resist the Imperius curse to stop himself from reaching for another piece of fruit. Instead he made himself feel around the little kitchen, finding more types of food and drink in his blind explorations than he had within his reach for a long time.</p>
<p>He ate a large piece of bread with creamy cheese that smelled like herbs and drank a whole bottle of orange juice since he couldn’t be bothered to find any cups before he could summon the willpower to step back from the kitchen and towards the bed, where he sat down heavily. Harry knew the dangers of over-eating after starvation, so he was trying not to fall prey to that, but it was hard when everything he had wanted over the last few months was now only a few blurry steps away.</p>
<p>Instead Harry lays down, right on top of the blankets, and closes his eyes.</p>
<p>He only means to do so for a moment, but when there is a sound and then the door opens he shoots awake with a feeling in he slept through just about the whole day.</p>
<p>“Hello again,” Says a familiar voice, and it takes Harry’s sleep fogged brain a few moments to recognise it as Griffiths. Harry’s mouth starts to water as the smell of meat permeates the air. “I have brought your dinner, I’ll put it on the table for you.”</p>
<p>By the time Harry can grumble a thanks the man is out the door again, leaving behind a divine smelling tray of something. At least, Harry presumes it’s a tray, he can’t really distinguish the blur of the food from the blob that is the table, though he can smell it. He makes his way over gingerly and feels his way around until he is sitting down in the chair, heavenly smelling meat in front of him.</p>
<p>He eats slowly again, savouring each bite and telling himself to hold back and not stuff his face the way he wants to because he knows he would make him throw up. It helps that he can’t really see the food or his cutlery, making the simple act of bringing a fork to his mouth a bit more difficult than usual. And he refuses to accidentally miss his mouth, he has no doubt the healers are monitoring him, and he has had enough indignity to last him a lifetime.</p>
<p>By the time he is done with the meat the other things on the plate have long since gotten cold, but Harry cares very little, and eats the cold vegetables with the same careful concentration until his fork is scraping over an empty plate. He thinks about exploring the room for a moment, because even though it is small, his limited sight means he has no idea if there are any other things in here. But he decides against it, he is tired and a bit too full, and the promise of a clean, soft bed where no one will try to steal from him or kill him is more tempting than anything else in the room manages to be at the moment.</p>
<p>Carefully he makes his way first to the small bathroom, where he has a horrible time finding how to flush the toilet, and then back to the bed, where he falls asleep before he can even properly register sitting down.</p>
<p>He is awoken from a deep sleep by a soft ‘pop’ and the smell of buttered toast coming from the little table to the side. He reaches for his glasses before he remembers than he doesn’t have them here and sits up in bed, squinting around the room in a way that only makes his eyes hurt more.</p>
<p>After only a bit of grumbling he makes his way to where the smell of breakfast is coming from, knowing he’ll probably need it since the test are starting today.</p>
<p>And indeed, Harry is just barely finished eating when he hears the door open and two people step in, only confirming that they are indeed Griffiths and Becksteyn when Harry hears them speak. They conjure a chair for him to sit in in the middle of the room with only his pants left on and then set about bringing in several trays of equipment that Harry can’t see but rattle rather ominously. The whole thing does nothing for his nerves, and he tries as hard as he can to focus on each moving blur and the sound and smell of the equipment the shift around.</p>
<p>“Right, this might be a bit uncomfortable.” Griffiths says right before slowly putting something that feels like a needle in Harry’s right arm.</p>
<p>There is a short pause, and then here are more pricks on several places on his arm, before Becksteyn on his other side gives a short warning before he too sticks something in Harry’s arm. On that side the equipment or technique feels different, and hurts a fair bit more than the thin needle-things that Griffiths is using.</p>
<p>It doesn’t stay to just his arms though, very soon blood is drawn from all major arteries. The blood they take directly from his heart with an instrument that has a golden glint that even Harry can see through the blurs and blobs that have become his world since yesterday hurts the most by far. It’s not close to the Cruciatus, but a lot more than just ‘uncomfortable’.</p>
<p>When they are done and leave again Harry feels a bit disorientated. Unsure of what to do he sits on his bed for a few long minutes before deciding to start exploring his room a bit better, despite his protesting body. A little bit of walking around is good for circulation, right?</p>
<p>One of the first things he finds in his explorations is that there is a closet next to the bed in the exact same shade of off-white as the wall behind it. He knows he is being monitored, but just hopes no one saw him crash into it like that. An exploration of the inside of the wardrobe uncovers a large amount of underwear, robes, blouses and pants as well as some items of clothing that Harry isn’t sure what to do with, amongst which an oddly shaped scarf and what feels like a night gown. Harry spends much too long contemplating sleeping in the nightgown to try to fit in in this century or deciding that all the closets for the test subjects are unisex and this dressing gown is meant for a woman. He eventually continues his explorations without making a decision.</p>
<p>There are very little other surprises in the room, it’s mostly bare walls and soft lights coming from nowhere. So Harry tests his self-restraint in exploring the kitchen in more detail until it’s time for lunch. After lunch he takes a nap and then carefully explores the bathroom which turns into taking the longest shower he must have taken in his life. There is a shallow tub he climbs into gingerly and then feels his way around until he understands where all the knobs and bottles are located before undressing and sitting down underneath the spray. He only comes out when it’s time for dinner.</p>
<p>He goes to bed early feeling the weariness in his body and some kind of need to catch up on all the sleep he had missed out since coming to this world.</p>
<p>He is glad for it the next day when the door opens right after breakfast again to have the two blurs enter that represent his two attending mediwizards, as well as a blob that must be mediwitch Allen who is just as grumpy and untalkative as when Harry had met her previously.</p>
<p> “Sorry,” Griffin says, “usually there is a day between any major bloodletting, but it seems somebody fucked up, and your samples as well as the vials they were in got ruined.”</p>
<p>This time he is given small tasks by Allen while the blood is taken, and it helps a bit with ignoring the pain when they take his hearts-blood again. Concentrating on touching his nose with his eyes closed or reciting the numbers she has him memorise help a bit to shut the pain out.</p>
<p>When they deposit him back on his bed and leave again Harry feels like a limp noodle, and rolls around a bit before deciding to just take a nap. With the amount of blood they took he doesn’t think it’s strange that he’s feeling a bit faint.</p>
<p>It only feels like a short nap before he is up again, shuffling his way towards the kitchen and rummaging around to where he had found the thing yesterday that he knew would cheer him up. And indeed, when his hands close around the bar of chocolate he feels better already, without even eating it. He eats some of it standing up at the kitchen counter, carefully folding back the packaging and bringing it to his mouth. The fruit and other things that were not part of his three meals a day had been replaced this morning from what he could feel, so he hopes the same will go for this small slice of heaven.</p>
<p>The rest of the day is spend squinting at things and exploring the room some more, his legs quaking and chest flaring up in pain whenever he strains either too much.</p>
<p>The food and sleep are helping, but Harry knows he will need more than a few meals before his head is screwed back on properly. So he tries to take it easy, eating, sleeping and showering the day away letting himself rest in a way he hadn’t been able to do for a long time.</p>
<p>The next day lunch appeared with a small ‘pop’ and Harry quickly sits down to eat, an activity that he is always up for these days, especially since this meal would be potion free. It hadn’t even taken him longer than a day to figure out that when a house-elf popped food into his room it was a standard hospital meal, as opposed to when a mediwizard brought it, which meant there was surely some potion or spell in there. They didn’t even bother to hide the taste of the potion, not really caring if it was noticed.</p>
<p>It was hard to track time with his kind of sight, but even if he would have had his glasses there was no clock or window in the room to reference. Still, Harry guessed it was only an hour or two before dinner when the door of the room opened, admitting this time not three but four blurs.</p>
<p>“I am Healer Devon, I will oversee the procedures today.” Was the only introduction Harry received before the blur with the darker robes directed the two turquoise blurs that represented Griffin and Becksteyn to set Harry in the chair again and start taking his blood again.</p>
<p>The healer wasn’t very talkative, and mostly just cast spells at Harry, some silent, some out loud, as the two mediwizards started the now familiar proceedings. There were several flashes of light, and an odd sound that took Harry much longer than it should have to figure out where the signs of pictures being taken.  Not everything was the same as the last two times though, there were a few different instruments and Healer Devon muttered something about vials being special between his spell casting and barking at Harry to memorise numbers and symbols.</p>
<p>“Can you read?” Healer Devon asks gruffly while making noises with some parchment that Harry tries hard to concentrate on while blood is drained with several different instruments from the inside of his thighs. It takes Harry a second to find his voice and then a second more to make sure he replies in an even tone as not to show any pain.</p>
<p>There is a soft grunt from the healer when Harry replies affirmative, but then there are more parchment noises and Harry can feel the air moving in front of him as something was thrust close to his face. “Then read this out loud.” The healer demands.</p>
<p>There is rather awkward pause as Harry can feel the mediwizards besides him twitch as he gives the direction of the darker robed blob a somewhat condescending smile. “If I am given my glasses I’d be happy to do so, but since I’m not in possession of them at the moment I would be more than happy to wait until you fetch them for me.”</p>
<p>There is a bit of a grumble. “No personal items. Which means glasses are disallowed, you’d know that if you had read the contract.”</p>
<p>“I did read the contract. I could do so because I still had my glasses then, but if you want me to read something now you’ll have to give me something for my eyes, because I can barely differentiate between people, let alone read something.”</p>
<p>After a bit more grumbling and a few spells cast on Harry’s head and eyes the healer finally seems to believe him and retreats with his vials of blood, the two mediwizards hot on his heels, and his parchments still unread. When they are gone Harry sits down on his bed, rubbing at his chest and wincing as it twinges. He wasn’t sure why they had drawn his blood three days in a row when Griffin had said there was usually a day between, but he hoped it wouldn’t set a trend, he was unsure how many days in succession he could stand to lose this much blood, even with the improved diet.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Bloody surprises</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>When the next evening the door opens, and the same blurs as yesterday enter Harry almost groans out loud, and only just manages to hold back and sit up straight at the small table he had been using as a work surface while making shapes and figures with toothpicks he had found, trying to remember all the runes that could be made with all straight lines.</p><p>The way the blobs enter has Harry sit up even straighter, the darker coloured blob looking the most determined and stalking towards Harry with more purpose than should be clear for being just a blob.</p><p>“Did you know your blood is corrosive?” The dark blob, or Healer Devon as he was more commonly known as, askes with what would be excitement if his tone hadn’t been so condescending.</p><p>Ah, well, that is a surprise, though Harry tries not to show it on his face.</p><p>“Well, what’s your explanation for that?” The healer demands impatiently.</p><p>Harry merely raises an eyebrow. “Weren’t you supposed to find that out by researching my blood? I thought that was the whole point of this experiment here.”</p><p>“But you know.” The healer replies, clearly certain of his case.</p><p>“Maybe.” Harry replies indifferently, thinking of being bitten by a Basilisk and cried on by a Phoenix, about being used in rituals, using blood quills and swearing blood oaths with his friends. These are all things he will never tell people here, and there is nothing forcing him to do so.</p><p>The healer makes a frustrated noise. “Tell me.” Harry wonders if the man is actually capable of asking instead of demand, so far it doesn’t seem like it.                                                                                                   </p><p>“Why should I?”</p><p>“Because I said so.” The healer says, clearly losing his patience</p><p>Harry just tosses his head a bit and smiles as innocently as can in the direction where he hears the healer speaking, not saying anything. There is the sound of expensive shoes pacing up and down, and Harry follows the blur that is Devon as well as his eyes allow as the man repositions himself, audibly swallowing down his irritation.</p><p>“Very well. What do you want. More food?”</p><p>“Glasses. Mine or other ones, I don’t particularly care, but I’d like to be able to see during my stay here.”</p><p>“Hmp. I think not, no personal items allowed, as you have been told before. I shan’t be bending any rules for information I will find out in time anyway.”</p><p>Harry stays silent, if he’s not given anything in return he doesn’t see why he should help the man out if he won’t get anything in return. It is silent for a while but to Harry’s surprise the healer doesn’t go away and instead seems to be studying Harry.</p><p>“Fine. I can’t promise anything, but I’ll ask around, see what kind of possibilities there are.” The healer caves, though Harry doesn’t trust him one bit. People like that always promised you the world until they got what they wanted and then left you to rot. But still, Harry decides to give him something.</p><p>“I have worked with snakes and other venoms animals in the past, and have been bitten several times in my life by various venomous creatures. Several times venom or poison of some kind has entered my bloodstream that was designed to kill the recipient, and my life had to be saved by using a very rare and uncommon healing techniques.” Harry says cautiously, taking care not to tell any outright untruths.</p><p>The healer asks a lot more questions, mostly about the healing techniques to Harry’s surprise, but he refuses to answer anything else.</p><p>“I will remind you that you have signed a contract to enter in this study and are required to answer my questions truthfully.” Healer Devon reminds him, sounding incredibly frustrated by Harry’s refusal to say more on the topic of his corrosive blood.</p><p>“That is correct,” Harry says, “but while the contract he signed stated that questions would be asked there was no stipulation that the subject should answer to his full knowledge, only that they should not deliberately lie. This is not a lie, this is just the subject not saying everything he knows, which is contractually allowed.”</p><p>Devon tries a few more threats with very little success, and eventually the healer leaves the room without getting anything else.</p><p>Harry is left alone for three blissful days, enjoying the food and rest before the door opens to anything other than an orderly bringing him potion-laced food.</p><p>In walks a variety of blurs, clearly several people but how many exactly Harry couldn’t say, all staying so close together that the blob of one person is indistinguishable from the blur of another. Even after squinting hard at the blobs that emanate the sound of expensive shoes on cheap floors the only thing he could say with any form of certainty is that there are multiple blobs that wear the darker colours that signals a healer.</p><p>“Subject Seven,” a voice that he doesn’t recognise says “We would like you to answer some questions we have regarding some of the things we are finding as result of looking for your injury history in your haemoglobin and fibrinogen.”</p><p>Harry learns a lot from the kind of questions they ask. Apparently so far they are only just looking at his injury history, as it had taken them some time to figure out how to do that and not melt their instruments with his blood. The way they view his injuries is chronological and it seems that they are still looking at his childhood. And ah, perhaps the whole Voldemort thing when he was a baby left something in his blood. Or maybe it was his mother’s protection. Harry isn’t sure, but whatever it is, it has a lot of healers very excited.</p><p>“You sustained many injuries in your younger years, magical as well as mundane.” A healer with an unfamiliar voice says from the collective blur of healers as if Harry wouldn’t know this himself. If Harry would guess he would say they are up to around the time he went to Hogwarts, and he wonders if the whole thing with burning Quirrell alive is visible too, or maybe Umbridge and her blood quill. He almost winces as he thinks about all the things he got up to or happened to him that might show up in his blood.  “We will be doing some extra test today to research further. Though if you would just answer our questions that would make the whole process a lot easier.”</p><p>Harry sits still as new instruments are attached to him with cold hands and he can feel blood starting to drain away. “You want me to tell you what I did when I was a baby? Then I’m sorry to say that I was not aware it was common to have memories of that age.”</p><p>The blobs are milling around now, and Harry determined there are definitely five people present, all healers if their robes were anything to go by. Of course, none of them had bothered to introduce themselves, and Harry only recognises healer Devon by voice. He tries not to show how bothered he is by the whole situation and instead focusses on the conversation and questions they keep asking.</p><p>“Perhaps you can be excused for not knowing the specifics of the event from when you were a babe, but around the age of eleven or twelve there was another event that clearly shows.” a female voice says, sounding older than any of the other so far, as well as even more arrogant if that were possible. So perhaps they had gotten to Hogwarts age, but if it was the whole burning Quirrell thing or Basilisk bite and phoenix tears Harry didn’t know, so he gave a slight shrug and tried not to wince as that pulled on some of the instruments taking his blood.</p><p>“Perhaps that Hogwarts letter that had difficulty finding me.” Harry obstinately suggested. “Or maybe venom from some of the animals I had contact with, and I got in a fair few fights in the course of my life, so it could be that as well. I might remember things better if I could have glasses.”</p><p>They didn’t really like his answers, but there was very little he could tell them without knowing what they were looking for exactly. It did make the whole ‘not lying’ thing a lot easier.</p><p>Eventually they leave again, grumbling all the way and with vague threats of returning soon.</p><p>*</p><p>The question as to whether it had been Quirrell or the whole chamber of secrets thing they had seen in his blood was answered two days later when his door slammed open to admit a group of healers in various stages of excitement. Their unusually fast-paced movements making them blur together more than they usually already did.</p><p>“Venom that needed phoenix tears to counter!”</p><p>“And where did someone like you get phoenix tears, huh.”</p><p>“Could have been an experimental healing draught as well as phoenix tears.” Another voice argues</p><p>“Hmp, yeah it seems much more likely he’d be able to get his hands on one of those. But that must have been one hell of a brewer if that’s true.”</p><p>“And what about that period in which there was clear evidence of mind invasion.”</p><p>“Oh, there was a little spike in the B42 area as well, do you know why that is, Subject Seven?”</p><p>“Just one small question about the event from when you were a baby.”</p><p>Harry just sit there and lets these healers talk to themselves for a while. He has no intention of answering any of their questions, and they seem more interested in arguing amongst themselves than actually listening to anything he might say anyway. He still hasn’t received glasses or anything else, if they are interested in what he has to say they can compensate him for it, which is what Harry tells them when they try to press him for answers.</p><p>The healers do not seem to like that idea at all. Harry doesn’t think glasses would really interfere that much with the results of whatever experiments they are running on him, they seem to be refusing him more out of principle than anything else. So in turn Harry refuses to answer their questions.</p><p>He sort of regrets it when they leave and then come back later in the day to run all sorts of new and painful experiments. He sits through it as stoically as he can, seeing flashes not only from the camera’s and spells they use, but also from the short but sharp bursts of pain that most of these apparatuses seem to create.</p><p>That seems to be the start of his room becoming some sort of meeting place for the scientist, who all seem to want to do different experiments, and because he only has a limited amount of blood available each day, are clearly not afraid to shove each other aside to get to it.</p><p>Harry makes a lot of vampire references in his head, until the moment he finds out that one of them, a woman who tells him to call her Healer Nye, is indeed a vampire. A vampire with a lot of opinions on the taste and smell of his blood. Which is all sorts of weird.</p><p>The group of healers as a whole seem to be able to decide on only a few things, and only a few of their theories are actually correct. They are right about the phoenix tears, but seem to think that Snape’s Legilimency lessons were part of him being tortured (which, honestly isn’t that far from the truth), and that he must have conducted several powerful rituals over his lifetime.</p><p>He gets a lot of healers visiting him regularly after that. They seem to have some rivalry amongst themselves and constantly try to one up each other, even in front of Harry, so he learns a lot about what they are doing, even if he doesn’t always understand the technical terms they use. He is pretty sure they are experimenting with his blood, but there is nothing he can do about it. There are some things they ask after that Harry thinks he might know what it is, but usually he has no idea, though he is pretty sure some of the things he did or were done to him in the war show.</p><p>“You have been subjected to the Imperius curse several times” Healer Devon says casually as he rustles though some parchment. Harry isn’t thrown by his casualness, neither confirming nor denying as he continues playing with the touch-based puzzle cube they gave him.</p><p>There is a barely audible sigh from the healer when Harry stays silent as usual. The blob twitches in place for a moment as Harry is treated to the sound of teeth being ground together before the man seems to come to a swift decision. “While I cannot offer you glasses at the moment there is a colleague that will visit you this afternoon who specialises in optometry who might be able to aid you in regaining some sight without brining unapproved objects inside.” It sounds like that physically hurt the man to say, which gives Harry some dark satisfaction.</p><p>“I have indeed been subjected to the Imperius curse several times, as well have I been able to resist it since I was fourteen years old.” Harry says casually, deciding to give a bit to see if anything will come of that promise. He doesn’t mention his own use of the curse, though he is sure they might be able to see some of it, he cannot be prosecuted for it as long as he doesn’t admit to it.</p><p>There is the beginning of a gasp before Healer Devon can compose himself. “I see.” He doesn’t sound as bland as usual and Harry can feel a spell being cast on him. “That is not a lie.” The healer continues in the same not-bland voice. Harry almost snorts out loud, there is no such thing as an easy ‘truth spell’ and whatever Devon just cast on him wouldn’t have held up, even if Harry had told him the sky was purple with pink polka dots. “Well, Subject Seven, your case is becoming more and more curious.”</p><p>Harry just hums and further ignores the healer until the man leaves, concentrating on the puzzle in his hands instead, an attempted bribe from another healer that had missed the mark. He is beginning to suspect some clues to solving it might be visual, which would be a shame.</p><p>Later that day his door opens to admit someone in Lilac robes, a woman with a low voice who introduces herself as Healer Burges and conjures a small chair for him to sit on as another blur, some type of assistant most likely, rolls in what sounds like a cart with a lot of metal equipment on it. Unlike any other procedure Harry had to sit through up to now, this healer talks a lot while she situates Harry and pulls out instruments that she moves around Harry’s head.</p><p>From the way she warns Harry every time she is about to cast magic on him he is pretty certain that unlike the rest of the people he had met so far, this woman isn’t a scientist and actually worked clients a lot, probably wealthy ones if her manner was anything to go by. Harry is also starkly reminded of how invasive the tests he usually sits through are by her litany of apologies when she must physically touch his eyes and head. She has Harry look at lights and shapes and asks a lot of questions, mostly about colour which seems rather odd, but Harry supposes she knows what she’s doing.</p><p>Eventually she softly sits down in front of and there is the sound of parchment crinkling as the assistant comes back and quietly starts packing the instruments again. “Well, it seems that something can be done, but I’m afraid that I cannot tell you the exact amounts of sight we can give you back. This is-” she breaks off with a little nervous cough and then tries again, “This will all be a bit experimental so while I’m sure that I can give you some sight back, I cannot as of yet give any guarantees.”</p><p>“Will it be dangerous in any way?” Harry demands, not willing to have his eyes replaced with buttons or whatever strange things these healers might come up with. He’d rather go without glasses for a few months than risk not being able to see ever again.</p><p>“Oh no, no, not at all.” Healer Burges quickly assures. “The absolute worst-case scenario is that nothing changes at all.”</p><p>“Then why isn’t this being tested on your normal customers?” Harry askes, well aware that</p><p>“Ah,” Burges says rather sheepishly “Well, it’s just that we’re not sure how uncomfortable the procedure will be, and since any currently known pain potions might tamper with the result of the procedure we want to know if the experience is… comfortable to undergo. A large part of the ‘experiment’ here will be monitoring your comfort levels throughout the process.”</p><p>She sounds rather nervous and uncomfortable about the whole thing and while he can’t see her Harry is pretty sure she is fidgeting.</p><p>“Hmm, well, that would be fine.”</p><p>Clearly relieved he actually consented to the procedure, despite the contract that might force him to accept it if he would not do if voluntarily, Burgess almost falls over herself to explain the process to him. She does not seem like a woman who would enjoy making anyone do anything by force, so Harry listens intently as she explains how the procedure itself would only take an hour, but then required the patient to not use their sight for four to seven days so he would be blindfolded for that time.</p><p>Burgess does most of the operation herself, only calling in assistants when absolutely necessary. Harry doesn’t think the procedure hurt enough to stop it from being performed again, but the gasps and sad noises that come from Healer Burgess tell him she thinks differently. Honestly, for Harry the worst part is having to wear the blindfold. It had been hard enough to navigate his tiny room when he could only see blobs and blurs, but doing it completely blind was much harder than he had been expecting.</p><p>The blood-drawing procedures were extra hard to undergo while he couldn’t see at all as well. He hadn’t realised how much he knew about what was happening around him from the way the blobs moved about until they weren’t there anymore. It also seemed like healer Devon was taking some kind of enjoyment or excitement from his blindness, because he seemed extra vicious in both the drawing of blood and his questions.</p><p>When the blindfold is finally allowed to come off Harry is more relieved than he is willing to admit. And after blinking away the flashes he sees from all the sudden light, the face of a woman is the first thing he sees. Healer Burgess looks much younger than he had imagined from her manner, long brown hair in a thick braid down her back and her lilac robes much more detailed and well-made than he had been expecting. He drinks in the sight of her slowly, and then looks around his room, for the first time able to see where he has been staying for the last couple weeks.</p><p>Healer Burgess is kind enough to give him a moment to collect himself before testing his eyes.</p><p>“Please look this way.” She says kindly, eyes crinkling when she smiles. “Now please read from the top and continue reading until you can’t see the lettering anymore.”</p><p>Far too quickly Harry has to stop, only managing to read the very biggest writing at the top of the parchment. His elation at being able to see again subsides a bit at the realisation that while his sight might be miles better than the blobby mess the world had been for him the last few weeks, it is still not good enough to actually read a normal parchment or book. Farsighted, Burgess calls him with a disappointed sigh. She had clearly hoped for better results, and frowns heavily as she makes notes on the piece of parchment floating nearby. Harry doubts that this procedure will ever make it to mainstream medicine, the pain and necessity to go blind for days clearly not weighing up to results.</p><p>“I am very sorry I couldn’t help you further, and I apologise for any… distress this procedure might have caused you.” Burgess says sincerely. She seemed to have this strange idea that as long as she called it a ‘procedure’ it would not be the ‘human experimentation’ that it actually was and made her so uncomfortable about the whole thing. “I will come back a few times to make sure everything holds and to do check-up’s, but should you feel any change yourself please ask for me immediately. But don’t worry too much about it, the whole procedure should be as permanent as can be and there should be no additional effects.”</p><p>She leaves Harry’s room quickly when several Healers come to take blood from him again, clearly not a fan of seeing someone tied to chair and having their blood drained in various painful ways, but willing to stomach it as long as she is not there to witness it. Harry doesn’t care about her hasty exit at all, much too occupied with looking at the faces of the healers and matching them with the voices he has come to know and reconciling them with the images his had built of them in his head.</p><p>Harry is very grateful for his sight when two days after the blindfold has come off, it becomes s very clear that the healers have gotten to the point in the injury list where he died and came back.</p><p>If he had thought that they had been ecstatic when they discovered the whole basilisk bite thing, it is nothing with how rabid they go when they get to the point in time where he had died, come back and became master of Death in one afternoon.</p><p>Of course, the healers being happy and curious means that Harry is drained of every last drop of blood he can miss without fainting. Luckily for Harry the Healers clearly have no idea what they are looking at, and while their theories of what happened are outlandish, they still can’t hold a candle to the truth. The only good part about the whole thing is that this is the perfect opportunity to talk himself into a pair of glasses. It is a Healer called Eastaughffe this time that lets themselves be talked into supplying him with the supposedly so strictly forbidden item.</p><p>“I can’t tell you exactly what happened, mostly because I’m not very sure myself, but I was hit by a curse that should have killed me. I am not sure what exactly happened, maybe I was dead for a moment, maybe outside forces stopped the curse from taking hold, but I ended up walking away from it.” Harry tells him in return. Keeping it as close to the truth as he can. “The curse cast on me was definitely illegal, I can say that much, but it was a very big fight and there were a lot of curses flying around so I couldn’t really identify each and every one of them.”</p><p>The healer is thrilled, and doesn’t even question the authenticity of Harry’s story, but he does ask all sorts of questions that Harry can’t or won’t give a straight answer to. That doesn’t mean Harry doesn’t manage to talk around the subject in a way he is rather proud of. If nothing else his stay here in the hospital is good for his talking and persuasion skills.</p><p>“I am not sure if I was the recipient of any experimental potions, but like I said, my guess is there had been outside forces in play. I don’t know if it was an object or spell or maybe a ritual of some kind, perhaps a combination of all three, but I would say some objects were definitely involved, I handled a lot of strange items in the period before.”</p><p> “Was there something, an object maybe, that belonged to your family that you carried with you from when you were one year old up until that event when you were eighteen? Something that got destroyed by the curse that was supposed to kill you maybe.” Eastaughffe asks, surprisingly insightful, even though not entirely on the right track. Harry doesn’t think a Horcrux really qualifies as an object.</p><p>He manages to talk around it a bit while still keeping the healer happy with his vague answers. It seems there were some advantages to everyone thinking you’re a bit stupid, or at least uneducated. None of the healers so far have thought it strange he doesn’t know much about his own life.</p><p>When Eastaughffe leaves he is looking very smug, and Harry breaths a quiet sigh of relief that he managed to not reveal anything crucial. The glasses he got out of the deal he puts on with relish, sighing in happiness at how clear his surrounding suddenly are. It might just be his imagination but even his old glasses hadn’t allowed him a view this sharp.</p><p>The other healers seem rather put out that Eastaughffe got the scoop on them, but when Harry lets it be known he could be bribed with books now, their envy abates a bit. They still make him take his glasses off when they run experiments or take blood for some reason. But Harry considers that a very small price to pay to be able to see properly when he is alone.</p><p> There still seem to be all sorts of things that they try to find from this injury list they are compiling, and Harry still has far less blood in his body at any given time than both he and the healers are happy with. From what he hears them discussing he guesses that something about the Deathly Hallows might also show, though he isn’t sure how that qualifies as an injury.</p><p>There is a small upheaval again when they get near the present with their research, his world-traveling also showing up in there. Though none of the healers seem half as interested in that bit as they are in the whole basilisk bite and the dying thing.</p><p>“And this is just what we know from looking at his injuries in combination with blood! We haven’t even started on abilities or heritage. Imagine what will come up there!” Harry hears a healer say just outside his door. He hopes they will skip thought he whole abilities thing quickly, there is nothing there to find anyway, and then get to the heritage part soon. The sooner the Potters know about him the sooner he can actually start doing something with his life here in this strange world.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Abilities and Heritage</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Harry can’t believe he was stupid enough to forget about Parsletongue. When he had read the contract and he had seen ‘abilities that show in the blood’ he had thought of metamorphic abilities and things like that, he hadn’t thought… well, the lack of food had probably rotted his brain a bit at that point in time.</p><p>But now Harry is sitting on a dark wooden chair in front of a small crowd of very important people (he knows they are important and rich people because they have lace literally everywhere lace can be) as a healer holds up a snake in front of him again and tells him to show the hospital administrators again.</p><p>“<em>Come to me.”</em></p><p>The snake is a bit drowsy but obeys him easily, sliding of the hands holding him towards Harry.</p><p>There are several gasps from the crowd as Harry, feeling rather bored, has the snake bite through the small restraints tying him to the chair. He shifts to a more comfortable position as the snake makes their way to his forearm and then waits for the next order. When nothing is forthcoming he turns to the man who had handed him the snake and is now looking at him with something between horror and awe.</p><p>“What? You thought I couldn’t get out of this chair?” There is no answer, but the face of the healer says enough. “I knew what was going to happen when I signed the contract to participate in study A54, I’m just not sure why the restrains are necessary, not when blood is drawn and especially not now.”</p><p>The snake hisses grumpily in the general direction of the crowd and any answer or explanation he might have gotten of the people around him is lost in favour of them pretending not to be disturbed by the display.</p><p>When they had started looking into abilities and a healer had told him in a rather bored tone of voice that there was a mild curse on him that stopped his hair from growing or being neat that was most likely passed down from a parent (Harry thinks his father might have cast that on himself but doesn’t say anything to the yawning healer) he had thought that would have been the end of the whole ability check.</p><p>But, of course, his life could never be that easy. So now he is stuck in this chair, performing tricks for increasingly wealthy and powerful people. A little army of healers with parchments, cameras and measuring devises standing around making sure he doesn’t go ten minutes without talking to a snake or taking part in some sort of experiment.</p><p>“Right.” Says a rather breathless woman who has lace even on the brim of her hat. “And you say you have always had this… talent.”</p><p>“Correct.” Harry says, turning his head away from the woman to look at the cage a healer is bringing closer that houses a bigger and more magically powerful snake than the one currently dosing on his arm. It doesn’t sound happy at all in that small cage and Harry hisses softly to calm it down a bit. “I found out the first time I saw a snake as a child. The python thanked me rather politely when I felt bad about him being locked up and vanished the glass with accidental magic.” He chuckles a bit at bit at the memory, though he is the only one that seems to find it funny.</p><p>“And you never told anyone about it?”</p><p>“I did. But the few people I told reacted rather violently, seeming to think it made me evil or some such nonsense, so I stopped telling people after a while. It’s not like it’s something that comes up in a lot of casual conversations anyway.”</p><p>“Your file says you grew up with your mother, did she have the same talent.” A different woman asks. She wears a fur stole in a rather unfortunate shade of brown but looks more unruffled by the whole Parsletongue business than most of the others. She watches dispassionately as the cage with the new snake is opened and Harry spends a moment taking the creature out and petting it before replying.</p><p>“Not that I know of. She died when before I found out I could, but if she did she never told me about it.”</p><p>“And your father?” The woman presses with sharp eyes, looking for a moment so much like Neville’s grandmother that it takes Harry’s breath away.</p><p>“I really can’t say, I’ve never met the man and my mother never told me who it was. The most she ever said about him was that I looked like him, and that was a long time ago.” Harry says, technically telling the truth.</p><p>“Your name, Evans, is the legal name from your mother’s side from what I understand, correct?”</p><p>“Evans was the name she used, though I am unsure if it was her legal one. I have used various names as I travelled, first and last names, it was simply the one she used most often.” Harry says with a small smile, thinking of when he called himself Neville Longbottom. It was not a lie and would work well with him being a Potter when they found somewhere hopefully in the near future.</p><p>“<em>I am hungry and cold.</em>” hisses the larger snake, bringing Harry’s attention back to them as they eye the small one that’s still wrapped around Harry’s bicep while curling themselves around Harry and the chair in an attempt to leach Harry’s body heat.</p><p>Snakes in general weren’t great conversationalists or thinkers. They could perform simple tasks, more difficult ones if Harry was standing next to them to guide them through it, but in general they weren’t very smart nor had they much of a long-term memory. That was something Harry had learned a long time ago, what he had learned from being a dancing monkey to these people, however, was that the more magical the snake the smarter they tended to be. The large snake demonstrated this when he reared his head and hissed at the healer that had let him out his cage. “<em>Make them feed me</em>.”</p><p>Harry relays the demand, taking care to look the healer in the eye and speak English. Shortly, several rats are floated over and the whole room watches as the snake swallows them down in one large bite.</p><p>“<em>Settle down for now. They might want us to do tricks later.”</em> Harry says while petting the large head that settles near his shoulder.</p><p>“<em>Tricks?</em>”</p><p>“<em>Pretend hunting, to show them how to do it</em>.”</p><p>“<em>I will hunt them any time</em>.” The snake answers, rearing up and hissing with bared fangs at the people around them, colours and markings on his skin flashing, of course completely disregarding the pretend part.</p><p>Harry smiles thinly at the administrators, completely understanding the feelings of the snake. “<em>They are too many, you can’t hunt them all before being captured.</em>”</p><p>“<em>But you can</em>.” The snake says, turning his head to Harry and shifting around him. Harry feels his eyebrows lift, he had never met a snake before who had such understanding of others and the world around them before. All the snakes he had met so far were egocentric, not understanding that others might have different limitations and abilities from them or any sense of anything that didn’t directly pertain to them.</p><p>“<em>I could,</em>” Harry agrees, turning his eyes back to the people around them, trying for a friendly smile but knowing he misses the mark when a few of the more nervous ones flinched back. “<em>But I won’t because I still need them.</em>”</p><p>And that was true. He still needed them to confirm his to be a Potter, then he could finish this stupid experiment and be done with it all. He just hoped the Potters wouldn’t have a problem with the whole Parsletongue thing and take him in anyway. So far the reactions from people in this world were much more positive than the ones he had faced on his own, so there was some hope.</p><p>When he was led back to the room he stayed in now he sank down one of the plush chairs, reached for his glasses and a book and set in for a long read. The room switch had come almost immediately after they had discovered his Parsletongue, and the furniture was a serious upgrade and not just in size. Instead of the thin, pale wood everything in the last room had been made from, there is now dark mahogany with fancy curls carved into it, soft cushions and an actual writing desk for some reason.</p><p>There are a lot more things to keep him busy in this new room, but Harry ignores most of it in favour of the large bookcase that spanned almost one whole wall. The selves are only partially filled, but that leaves some room for the healers to bribe him with new books as they do more and more tests without having any answers.</p><p>He is left to his books until later in the day, when there is a knock on his door and a short pause before anyone enters. It’s a bit hilarious to Harry to see the change from the beginning of his stay here where anyone and everyone would just barge in when they wanted. It seems that being unusual was, in this case, not only earning him a lot of notice and curiosity from various parties, but also some respect that he had done nothing to earn. They call him ‘Mister Evans’ now instead of Subject Seven, as if that is supposed to make Harry forget where he is.</p><p>They take his blood again, trying to be as gentle as they can, which doesn’t mean much when it is the procedure itself that is painful. Eastaughffe winces as the device pulls on Harry’s skin and flickers his eyes to Harry’s face with a worried look. Harry just stares back, wanting the whole thing to be over so he can eat something and then go back to his book. He does note that they didn’t tie him down this time, which he appreciates more than the vaguely apologetic sounds Eastaughffe makes when he detaches the devices, collects the blood, and flees the room, leaving Harry alone with his books again.</p><p>Harry had never thought he’d be the kind of person who could be bribed with history books. He had never thought he’d be the kind of person who would let themselves be bribed at all if he was honest, but it seems that desperate circumstances indeed call for desperate measures.</p><p>When he had dropped into this world it seemed like the biggest difference were the two moons in the sky, the inclusion of creatures in society and the different rate of development in different magical areas, but Harry could now see that wasn’t the main difference at all. No, all these differences seemed to have the same origin, the same reason for happening. People here grew old.</p><p>The first time he read an account of somebody dying at ‘middle age’ and then the age being recorded as 500 years old he had though it was a simple mistake and it should have said 50. Dumbledore had been considered very old with his 115 years, and Harry doesn’t think he ever heard of any wizard or witch older than 130 back in his own world. But that was different here it seemed. People here got old. <em>Really</em> old.</p><p>People who live decades apart in Harry’s own world met each other in this one. There are all sorts of records in the history books of conflicts resolved or started between people who, in Harry’s world, never met. All sorts of collaborations, rivalries, wars and agreements entered into, simply because now these people actually met and talked to one another.</p><p>It is interesting now to look at the people gawking at him and try to guess their ages, most people just look like they’re in their forties or fifties, but Harry now knows that they are most likely at least ten times that old. Somehow it makes their gawking at him a bit funny.</p><p>Pretty soon it’s not just healers or people who run the hospital that come to gawk at Harry, but wealthy and important people of all kinds come and watch as the healers make him jump more and more hurdles when talking Parsletongue. Ministry workers drop their jaw as the healers make Harry not just talk to and command normal snakes, but also conjured ones of various kinds.</p><p>It had come as a surprise to Harry himself as well to find out that he could talk to and direct the fake snakes the healers created. They are even stupider than a normal snake, but still. Harry pretty easily makes them go against whatever order the caster had given and makes the animation listen to him instead.</p><p>After some experimentation they find out that it even extends to some carvings and toys in the shape of a snake, though there needs to be a significant amount of magic in whatever object holds the likeness of the snake, and even then, Harry can’t make them do much more than just crawl around. Harry gets enough of those kinds of experimentations very quickly, because while it’s not painful it is boring. Arguably a greater sin in Harry’s view.</p><p>So when he gets bored of it, he just simply refuses to participate, leaving the healers floundering and frowning in front of whoever saw it fit to come gape at Harry today. He only let’s them bribe him with new books a few times, otherwise just sitting in front of his audience of the day frowning in silence until they bring in an actual snake.</p><p>The Parsletongue mania doesn’t seem like it will abate anytime soon, but luckily some healers do move on to doing tests to do with things other than snakes. They find some strange things in his blood apparently that they are sure have nothing to do with the Parsletongue. Harry just shakes his head, not really able to help them when they ask if he is hiding some other rare talent from them. He does wonder if it’s the Hallows or maybe the time travel that has left a trace, but he doesn’t think that really counts as an ability. The healers are pretty pumped about it none the less, and Harry is all for encouraging them to hurry up with the ability check thing and move on to heritage. There is a set ending date for this experiment, and if he has to leave here without them confirming he’s a Potter he thinks he might scream.</p><p>In between experiments, being a dancing monkey and trying to subtly hurry the healers along, Harry spends a lot of time each day reading history books, though he receives plenty of books on different subjects as well. This being a hospital and all means that he receives more than a fair share of medical books of course, but there is such a broad arrangement of subjects he receives books on that he wouldn’t even know how to sort them all. But the variety does make it easier to try and paint a more accurate picture of this society. It seems that despite everyone growing insanely old, conceiving children is very difficult in this world. Pureblood families still seem to be larger than Harry is used to, but that is because they simply have more time to spend on procreating. Ironically enough for a family to have a large number of children is clearly seen as a sign of wealth and power here.</p><p>It is when he looks into the pureblood family structures of this world that he makes arguably his most important discovery to date. Complementing the article he is reading on the Black family there is a pretty detailed description of the current members and an accompanying picture. Harry feels his soul almost leave his body when he finds out there is a version of Sirius alive here.</p><p>It had occurred to him earlier that the familiar face people he used to see on the streets occasionally might be more than hunger induced hallucinations, but he hadn’t expected for it to be shoved in his face like this.</p><p>His hands are shaking as he bends over the parchment to get a better look. The picture that accompanies the article is small, and while the photo description says it’s only the ‘<em>Members of the Ancient and Noble House of Black (main branch)</em>’ there are a good fifteen people in the picture. Harry’s eyes immediately pick out Sirius from the sea of mostly dark-haired people. Or well, a man with Sirius’s face and name, Harry has no way of knowing if this man would have been Sirius or maybe Sirius’s grandfather. It is giving him a headache and his hands haven’t stopped shaking since he suddenly saw that familiar face.</p><p>He thinks he does die when he looks at the picture and description a bit longer and sees that this Sirius has a little sister by the name of Walburga with a very familiar face. He puts the book down and spends some time eating away his feelings until his hands stop shaking. He isn’t sure he wants to think about how that works.</p><p>When they come to take his blood again an hour later it’s almost a welcome distraction from the chaos in his head. After that he is taken to a conference room with a small group of men, with clothes made from what seems like more lace than fabric, that he must show his Parsletongue tricks to by chatting to a portrait of a snake that is startlingly intelligent and tells him all sorts of things he heard while hanging in Healer Greengrass’s house.</p><p>Harry can’t help but look at the faces of the people in the room and wonder if a version of them were alive in the world he comes from. He is never introduced to these people. Or well, they are introduced to him but he never receives an introduction in return. Still, one of the men has the bleach blond hair of a Malfoy and one of the others looks strikingly like the pictures of Cyprian Youdle Harry had seen in his quidditch books.</p><p>Now that Harry is paying attention it seems that he is seeing familiar faces everywhere. He had seen some people who resembled ones in his old world before, but he had written it off as the hunger getting to his head and later just family resemblance or maybe ancestors. Now however, now Harry thinks that some of the faces looking at him as he makes snakes dance are not just similar to the people he knew, but exactly the same.</p><p>History is all out of order here, so who knows. But even then, would it really matter? The people here have different experiences and lives than the ones he knew, so they’d be a different person anyway, no matter if their faces and names are the same as the ones Harry knows. Right? It’s a rather difficult situation, and Harry flip flops heavily between not wanting to know and trying to find out everything he can on the topic.</p><p>He’d really like some books on the Potters, but so far luck has not given him that despite his ever-growing borrowed library here. He wants to ask for something on the Potters, to see if his father… maybe James would be here. Or a version of him at least.</p><p>Harry isn’t sure if he wants that or not, but the question keeps him awake nevertheless.</p><p>The point is moot however, it’s not like he has an excuse to ask for books on the Potters yet. He really hopes they hurry up with the whole heritage thing so he can ask for books on his family without raising suspicion.</p><p>It seems like he can ask sometime soon however, as he overhears some of the healers talking to one another in not quite hushed enough voices on needing more blood for the heritage checks. They sound a bit odd about it, but Harry supposes that they’d had a lot of unexpected surprises so far so their caution is understandable. Harry pays little attention to the worried and hesitant looks the healers send him and instead focuses on eating and reading.</p><p>Harry doesn’t really care about any of the extra tests the healers are whispering about, he knows what they will find anyway. These books however, they will be gone as soon as he is released from this place, so he needs to take advantage of them for as long as he can.</p><p>So far he has developed the theory that age makes people here a bit more… mellow than the ones in Harry’s world. They have longer to accomplish things and there seems to be a bit less pressure to get things done immediately. Whether this is a good or bad thing Harry can’t really say, if that restrained attitude works out well or not really seems to depend on each situation. But especially amongst the upper classes ‘work’ is considered a part time thing, spending most of their time traveling, going to the various schools that apparently exists, doing ‘community service’ and philanthropy, and all sorts of things in name of ‘enriching their lives’.</p><p>The next week is once more a blur of getting his blood drained and showing off his Parsletongue to curious onlookers. Harry is pretty sure there are even foreign dignitaries mixed in at this point, and he is pretty sure he saw that one wizard with the ugly orange robes at least five times by now. His head feels a bit light when he makes the snakes they bring him drag blocks from one place to another. This time not because he is starving but because there is so little blood left in his body.</p><p>Then, oddly enough, from one day to the next, he isn’t fetched from his room. Nobody comes. Not to take his blood, not to make him perform, not to just gape at him as some of the lower ranking healers or medipersons sometimes do.</p><p>Nobody comes to his room for three days. Meals are popped in by house-elf delivery and are all the indication Harry has that someone still knows he exists.</p><p>The first day he relaxes, reads his books, humming while he eats and the dizziness from blood loss disappears. The second day he thinks is strange nobody has bothered him so far, but doesn’t really care as he buries himself in a book about the formation of this world’s government and is only brought out of it when dinner time is already past. The third day however, the third day he gets worried.</p><p>The urge to pace up and down the now suddenly very small feeling room is squashed only by the knowledge that they are monitoring him at all times and he doesn’t want to give them the pleasure of his discomfort. He briefly considers if this could be another test, but quickly dismisses that thought.</p><p>He sits in his chair with a book on his lap but not really seeing the pages, wondering if somebody got spooked about his Parsletongue, or if they found out he is a Potter but now the Potters are putting up a fight because they don’t like his Parsletongue. All sorts of disaster scenarios flit through Harry’s mind.</p><p>It is two more days of careful not-pacing and not-panicking before there is a knock on the door.</p><p>A healer steps in that Harry vaguely recognises seeing before. The man is looking all kinds of nervous and shifty eyed as he takes one hesitant step into Harrys room and then stops there, looking like he’d rather immediately step out again.</p><p>“Uhm, Mister… Mister uhm.. ah, Subject Seven, you. Your presence is, uh, requested. Please follow me.“</p><p>That is a good thing right, Harry wonders as he gets up and slowly follows the man through the corridors of the research facility. The healer not knowing what name to call him means they at least found out he was a Potter, no matter what else they might have found.</p><p>They move from the research facility into the main hospital, the nervous healer not speaking, but casting a look behind him every few seconds to check if Harry is still following. He is led into an auditorium, with benches full of people literally looking down on him.</p><p>Harry tries to hold himself as unaffected, but this whole situation is very unnerving. It is very different from his usual Parsletongue performances and these people look very official and very grim. It reminds him in many ways of the time he had to come before the Wizengamot, and makes him just as nervous. Luckily he is better at hiding his feelings than he was at that age.</p><p>The healer next to Harry unexpectedly offers Harry a chair, and then steps back. It leaves Harry sitting in a semi-circle of space before the chairs start that the spectators are seated on. Harry recognises some of their faces, but most he doesn’t. He does recognise the style of clothing most ministry workers wear by now, and there are a lot of those around. Purple with an emblem. Which means very high-ranking government official Harry knows by now.</p><p>Near the wall is a cluster of healers, all in their Sunday best, looking as nervous as Harry feels. One of them steps forward with a piece of parchment in his hand. The man’s eyes flit from Harry to the people in the room and clearly doesn’t know who to exactly speak to. Though, whatever he is about to say was clearly already known to everyone but Harry if the serious faces and stony silence of everyone here were any indication. </p><p>“Uhm, right. Welcome, Minister, Honoured members of the Wizengamot, Representatives, Hospital Administrators and other gathered persons.” The healer trails off with a wince, eyes darting about nervously, finally mostly turning towards Harry.</p><p>Harry’s stomach is in knots there are so many things flying through his head that it’s difficult to even work up a full panic. Maybe they found out about the Hallows, Harry thinks, heart suddenly in his throat. Or maybe about the world-travel. All sorts of scenario’s flash before his eyes, and for the first time he truly wishes he never participated in this stupid study. If they found out and now want to lock him up or experiment on him for the rest of his life he’ll have no one to blame but himself.</p><p>The healer clears his throat and then tries again. “Ah, as you may know the main objective of study A54 was to see if the subject’s heritage could be deduced by looking at haemoglobin markers and other indications in the subject’s blood. The, uh, subject being you in this case.” The healer says, anxiously casting a look at Harry. “While there was some more time spend on other parts of the research because of… unusual findings, more on that in a moment, it was lineage that was our number one priority.”</p><p>The people around the table look serious, a few of them nervous or contemptuous underneath their blank facades, but that is nothing new. Since they found out he could speak Parsletongue the contempt had decreased a bit and nervousness had become more common, so no deviation from the norm there.</p><p>“Subject Seven has proved to possess not only the talent of speaking Parsletongue, but also survived the venom of various snakes with no lasting effect other than corrosiveness of the blood. Further testing has shown that this heritage of innate traits and abilities are linked to ancestry and are proof of descent.”</p><p>Harry tries not to let anyone notice how much the whole situation bothers him and wishes the healer would just get to the point.</p><p>“- and taking all these markers in consideration and after numerous rounds of testing the research team has confirmed what has been expected for a while, and proven that Subject Seven is indeed of the Slytherin line.”</p><p>The world seems to freeze for a moment, and Harry feels cold. What did that man just say? There is a rushing in his ears and Harry is very glad he is already sitting down.</p><p> “While the subject’s blood presented a lot of challenges, it was proving that suspected link to a line that we presumed to have been died out that was the most difficult. While no official blood samples of the line survives, there are several artefacts that do, as well as vaults at Gringotts Bank of which the latent signature has been matched to the subject.-”</p><p>Slytherin. They think he’s from the Slytherin line. Why, no, how, did they come to this conclusion?</p><p>The healer prattles on about how their tests show his Slytherin lineage and has his wand raised in the air and uses visual aids to clear up… something. Harry can’t really pay attention. He wants to tell the man to stop. Tell them all he is a Potter. Not a Slytherin!</p><p>“- so prevalent that not only talents belonging to the Slytherin line but even actual physical markers such as colour of the iris and hair, ginglymus joint, articulation of the femur and the tibia, and the pronouncement of the zygomatic bone show up in the subject. A full list of physical and non-physical markers can be found in the research paper.”</p><p>Harry wants to scream at the man to shut up, to… to do something. He grips the armrests hard to prevent himself from doing something stupid, heart beating wildly in his chest and wood digging into his palms. The faces of the people in the auditorium that surround him are grave but only mildly interested, they have clearly heard this before. The have been told he was from the Slytherin line and they clearly <em>believed</em> it.</p><p>There is a chart in the air and the healer is still talking. “As you can see there are indeed some clear traces of the Noble House of Potter blood and, on page 103 of the report, you can see there are faint traces of The Noble and most Ancient House of Black in Subject Seven’s blood, as well as possible markers that indicate the Selwyn and Peverell line.”</p><p>It’s too late to get off this train, Harry knows. The only thing he can now do is roll with the punches. He just isn’t sure how to do that yet. A good first step would be to make his body stop producing this much adrenaline, Harry thinks wryly.</p><p>“- therefore, we declare Subject Seven the only known survivor of the Slytherin line.”</p><p>There is a short pause as the healer steps backwards and a man in heavy robes stands up from one of the chairs in front. Harry is so out of it, it takes a few moments for him to recognise the finely robed man as the current Prime Minister of Magic, Aelfric Holton. The man looks at Harry with an odd coolness that speaks of working in politics for years.</p><p>“I will now speak in name of the British Ministry of Magic. The report and research have been received, read and understood. While there are still ambiguities, The Ministry has at this point in time no choice but to recognise the gentleman as being a descendant from the Most Ancient and Most Noble House of Slytherin.”</p><p>There is a sound of excitement and a few gasps from some of the people on the benches, but they are quickly hushed by their neighbours.</p><p>“However,” the Minister continues with a sharp look “We do not recognise that it is the Main branch the gentleman in question relates to. Therefore, while the name of Slytherin itself might be used once all the proper procedures have been completed, no use of any of the titles usually associated with the family will be officially recognised until such a time that the future Mister Slytherin can prove to be of the main family line or a direct descendant from Salazar Slytherin himself without reasonable doubt.”</p><p>“That is Poppycock and you know it!” Sounds a woman suddenly. She stands a moment after she speaks, and Harry can see several people around her nodding in agreement. She is wearing dark clothing with more fur than lace, with dark red lips in the same kind of ageless face everyone around here has. “It is well known that the talent of Parsletongue is inherited though the main line, you are simply worried he’ll claim the seats in various governmental bodies that come with the Lordship and you’ll lose your majority.”</p><p>Holton gives a thin smile. “There is no evidence supporting that to my knowledge. Like I said Madam Bones, it will first have to be proven that it is the Slytherin Main line that is in play here. Without said conclusive evidence the ministry will not recognise the gentleman in question as the Head of the Slytherin family.”</p><p>“That’s ridiculous. He’s the only one, of course he’s the head of the family. You know full well it’s only a matter of time.” Harry doesn’t think she looks much like Amelia or Susan Bones, but that could just be the lack of monocle. She does however look like she knows what she’s doing, and while Harry understands little of the politics going on in this world it’s clear that Madam Bones is in opposition to the current Prime Minister.</p><p>Holton makes an uncaring gesture, making the lace on his robes fly about. “Then I’m sure you won’t mind waiting.”</p><p>That seems to be the end of the meeting, and Harry is led back out again, head is still spinning.</p><p>He is so out of it he doesn’t even notice he’s not led back to his room until he’s standing in a different one and the door closes behind him. A quick look around tells him this is more of a large, fancy apartment than a room. He doesn’t really care for it at the moment and falls into the first chair within reach. He needs to think.</p><p>When dinner is served and Harry still hasn’t moved from the chair, mind too busy to think of food, there is a soft pop and the food is transported from the dining room to the coffee table on his right. Well, there are clearly going to be some advantages to being declared Slytherin instead of Potter, Harry thinks wryly as he eats the food without actually tasting it.</p><p>They give him a snake to chat with. Because of course they do. It’s a crossbred species of Boomslang, only not venomous and a lot more intelligent. It still isn’t the best conversation partner, but the company is oddly pleasant after a while. Harry is well aware that any conversation with the snake is carefully recorded, but doesn’t really care. Everything he does here is recorded or observed by someone, and it’s not like they actually know what he and the snake are talking about anyway.</p><p>Two days later, two days in which the only ‘test’ he had to do was a written one that he finished within half an hour, there are visitors for him.</p><p>Two women, who introduce themselves as Wilhelmina Shafiq and Agatha Higgs, and tell him that they will be helping him with the application process for the right to use the Slytherin name and any other legal matter. Shafiq – Call me Wilhelmina dear, and this is Agatha – is apparently the head of whatever office that is in charge of helping him, and only here today as a courtesy. Harry doubts any other people who took part in this trial received such help when they discovered a heritage, but he is grateful for the help none the less.</p><p>They are drinking tea in the parlour that is now part of the rooms where Harry stays, as the two women explain the details to him.</p><p>“The office will only be able to assist you up to one month after your release from the hospital, but that should be plenty of time to arrange the most basic of things.” Wilhelmina explains, handing several more leaflets and papers to Harry to join the pile he already has.</p><p>“It is very much appreciated.” Harry says politely after he takes a sip from his tea. “I had anticipated only being able to start looking into the process once I finished the trial here, but it seems that it can be started a little earlier.”</p><p>“You have been granted permission to use the Slytherin name, so I would suggest arranging that first. The other things, entering yourself in the system, the opening of accounts, and the possible claiming of family assets, will be much easier when you can legally sign with the Slytherin name. And I don’t foresee that process taking longer than two weeks at most.”</p><p>“Actually,” Harry said carefully, trying to hold his tea the same way both ladies did and eying the pile of documents in front of him. “I think I would like to tackle official citizenship first, which is something I do not have at this time unfortunately. Since my birth might have taken place outside of national borders it was never automatically granted, you see.”</p><p>Wilhelmina frowns, making a short note with her rather extravagant quill. “I see. I was not aware of that.”</p><p>“We can, perhaps, start both at the same time.” Agatha pipes up with a look at boss. “It wouldn’t be too hard, and it would probably better to prove both at once, they will ask after the other when we hand in the application separately anyway.”</p><p>He is handed more parchment and firm instructions to read everything and fill every form out as completely as he can.</p><p>“A weekly meeting with Agatha here should suffice I believe.” Wilhelmina says, waving her quill imperiously as she gathers her things around her again, “Should any more be necessary you can always contact of course.”</p><p>Harry thanks them very politely and then shows them to the door, practicing all the manners he read about. He isn’t sure if they are suitable for his social status, he isn’t even sure what his status is at the moment, but he’ll be damned if he’ll let this chance pass him by.</p><p>He eyes the pile of parchments for a moment before sighing and sweeping them up in his arms, making his way to the honest to god study they gave him and dumps the whole lot on the ridiculous large desk in there before taking a seat and starting to sort through the bunch.</p><p>There are no more invasive tests, and Harry is left alone with his snake, that he hasn’t bothered to name since he knows he won’t be allowed to bring the animal with him when he leaves here, for most of the days. He uses his time as productively as he can by working through the paperwork that he has been given, and reading as much as he can on any subject that he thinks might be useful.</p><p>Any blood drawn from him now is done with a painless method and taken from a different vein each time. He’s heard some grumbling that blood taken that way isn’t nearly as useful, but none of the healers seem to dare to take it the way they had done before. Which is frankly ridiculous, because Harry still can’t say no if they try. It seems him being a Slytherin made them hesitant in causing him pain. Or well, them thinking he is a Slytherin.</p><p>He sees Agatha twice before the trial at Saint Mungo’s is finally at its end, and they manage to get quite far in the application process for both the citizenship and the use of the Slytherin name. Which is a lot better than Harry had been expecting, but he thinks it’s about time he had some luck.</p><p>The healers are less thrilled with him leaving than he had been expecting, and he starts receiving all sorts of offers for further trials and tests once the end of his stay at Saint Mungo’s is in sight. He declines all of them as politely as he can, but does tell them that he might take them up on it at a later date. You never know what the future might bring and while he isn’t planning on it might function as a last-resort kind of thing to fall back should everything go to shit.</p><p>Then it all seems to happen really fast suddenly, he hands back the glasses he used, receives his money and is given a tray with his own clothes in it. The healers leave him to his own devices then, saying goodbye politely before leaving the room in a gaggle of whispers and noise.</p><p>Putting his clothes back on after those months of cleanliness feels more horrible than Harry had been expecting. They feel so dirty, crusty with all sorts of things he doesn’t want to think about. His glasses no longer work for him, so Harry pockets those and easily makes his way outside. It seems that once he puts on dirty clothes and looks like a bum again he becomes invisible to all the Healers and medical personal that had be clamouring for his attention earlier.</p><p>The outside air feels good on his face, and he stands there for a moment taking it all in before he can get his legs to move again.</p><p>His eye falls on a cart with stacks of The Daily Prophet, and sees himself blinking back from the front page. The headline declares him the long-lost Prospect Lord to the Slytherin line, and Harry feels rather weak in the knees reading it. In one of the pictures he is sitting, he looks thin Harry thinks; all bony wrists and knobbly knees. The other is a close-up of his face, where he is clearly listing to someone speak. The description calls him ‘aristocratic’ but harry knows those cheekbones are pronounced because of starvation, not because he is Slytherin.</p><p>They took a lot of pictures throughout the trial, and Harry can’t even remember when these were taken. There had been no mirrors, even when his room had gotten an upgrade, and Harry brings a hand to his cheek in an attempt to feel if his cheeks are still that sunken.</p><p>Letting his hand fall back to his side Harry just stands there for a moment, blinking away the strange feelings he has as people rush past him and grumble because he is in the way. None of them seem to realise that the dirty bum standing there is the Slytherin all the conversations around him seem to be about. It takes a few moments before he can shake himself awake and walk away from the image of his own face.</p><p>He picks up the Hallows he had stored in the cottage where he had once liberated a wedding ring from, and then returns to his tiny bedroom on top of the bookshop, feeling almost as out of sorts at being back here as he had been when just arriving in this world.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Getting out</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>For those who looked up the medical terms used in the last chapter; yes, I did indeed imply that knobbly knees are a Slytherin trait.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It quickly becomes clear to Harry that despite his initial chat with Wilhelmina and Agatha in which they promised to help him, they are mostly here to tell him not to do things. They are very much a part of the ministry, and while helping him get the citizenship and use of Slytherin family name seems to be fine, anything else that he does is met with pursed lips and disapproving looks.</p><p>Some of the things that Agatha says makes sense, trying to claim the Gringotts vaults while not being recognised as Lord Slytherin is indeed not allowed and the security on the vaults might kill him if he does not have the title. Some of her other advice, however, seems more like ministry drivel than trying to help him.</p><p>“Don’t try and reposes any properties that might have belonged to the Slytherin family at one point,” Agatha says, “while it might have been originally a Slytherin property there is no way to prove that now, and there are people living in there that have to money to buy the best lawyers.” And when Harry asks after artefacts not hidden Gringotts that might be in possession of other individuals or institutions at this point, she just tells him straight out he’s welcome to try but that he’ll never win the court case.</p><p>It doesn’t take Harry long to figure out that the ministry is in possession of some of said artefacts and land.</p><p>Any assets that the ministry has seized from the Slytherin line seem to be impossible to reclaim, funnily enough. Agatha seems very certain about that if nothing else. It’s a bit frustrating but he had been expecting something like this, so it’s not really a surprise. He might try for some of those things at a later point, when he was better established, but for now he lets most of it go. He’d rather first get his citizenship than lose it in some half-baked attempt to gain access to property some lace-laden pureblood snob owned.</p><p>Harry knew he had to act fast, strike while the iron was hot so to speak, because the longer he lingered in this situation the easier it would be to lose all the progress he had made. The money he made from the study would need to be put towards making sure he could get out of this place.</p><p>While not being recognised as a Potter had been an unexpected and unwelcome surprise, Harry knew how to roll with the punches and was trying hard to make something out of the strange situation he had found himself in. So far no one but Beld had recognised him as the Slytherin heir, and Harry really hoped he’d get out of here before anyone did.</p><p>The papers were still writing about him every day and Harry knew he had to act fast before the public lost interest. Investing some money in semi-decent clothing so he could walk into the ministry without them trying to immediately kick him out again was a good first step he decided as he walked in and nobody gave an immediate negative reaction. Not looking like he was homeless had been a good idea.</p><p>There are still a lot of looks thrown his way as he makes his way through the ministry to the department of Translocation and Immigration where Agatha is waiting for him, but nobody bothers him at least. He thinks it’s just the lack of lace, everyone here seems to wear at least five layers of the stuff.</p><p>Still, it’s a relief when he finds Agatha’s office again, at least something today would be easy. He has some questions to ask her, mostly about trying to claim some of the seats on the various governing bodies the Slytherin family used to have, and he doesn’t think she’ll have a very helpful answer for him. He isn’t really interested in actually claiming any of those any time soon, but what and how she answers would give him a good indication of the ministry’s opinion of that in general.</p><p>He couldn’t claim the ones in the House of Lords or the Wizengamot without being a Lord, obviously, but some of the smaller or less important positions might be an option in some distant future. The House of Representatives still had a chair open for the Slytherin family, as had the Ministry of General Affairs, the Treasury Department and The Honourable House. Those seats were mostly symbolic at the moment, but that could be changed.</p><p>Unsurprisingly, Agatha did not think it could be changed.</p><p>“Oh my, I don’t think that’s such a great idea. We could look into which departments and ministries still have such old and symbolic seats, but it would be very difficult to turn them to active. And besides, it’s not like you know anything about these departments anyway, you’d have no idea what to do with the seats once you activated them.”</p><p>“Not that you couldn’t learn of course.” She blusters on when Harry raises an eyebrow at the insult. “But perhaps it is wise to wait a bit longer before attempting anything like that, wouldn’t you say? Take some time to think about if that is really what you want to do with your time. It’s all very boring anyway, isn’t it.” She giggles a bit nervously, eyes darting to the door as if whoever told her to make sure Harry doesn’t meddle in anything political is listening on the other side.</p><p>“Yes, uhm, best to just wait and. Oh, finish your studies maybe. You can’t have any official certificates or diplomas, not if you weren’t a citizen. And it’s better to do the basics first, isn’t it. And you might find that your passions take you in different directions than politics. Would be a waste if you put so much effort in trying to reclaim them and then weren’t interested in making use, right.”</p><p>Harry wants to push a bit more, but decides against it. It might just be better to figure those things out on his own and see where it gets him. Agatha is much too nervous to be of any help and it’s not like the political stuff is very urgent at the moment. He’s more concerned with finding a source of income and a place to live. He just thought it might help him get more established, but it seems that he’s going to receive a lot of push back trying to get anywhere with anything in the ministry.</p><p>“Oh look here,” She says in a clear attempt to switch topics, picking up a piece of parchment from her desk and pushing it towards Harry. “We have received the official stamp from The Office of Transmutation and Migration, now just the Integral Eternal Internal Department will need to sign off on it and your citizenship will be approved! IEID is usually pretty fast with passing judgment on these kind of things so that should be done in a jiffy.”</p><p>Harry just nods and pretends he knows all these departments and offices Agatha keeps referring to. He has gotten used to the paperwork by now, but the actual structure behind it still kind of baffles him. This Ministry’s system seems to be even more convoluted than the one on his world.</p><p>“It will have to wait a day or two, because the official use of the Slytherin name is taking a bit longer, Martha has a cold and is out of office so everything takes a bit longer in that department to sign off on, and it’s better if we get the final approval at once.”</p><p>Harry stifles a sigh but lets the change of topic stand. “All right, that is good news indeed. Will I need to come back to sign off on that one before we can apply for the final step?”</p><p>“Oh no, that shouldn’t be necessary at all, as long as the TTG B-2 form is all in order everything should go smoothly from here, without any further action from you required. I think it should be three or four days at most before both are finalised.”</p><p>The meeting wraps of quickly after that, and Harry makes his way back through the hallway to the atrium where he takes a left to the registry office. Even if Agatha tells him it won’t be any use, it still can’t hurt to see if there are any properties or plots of land still filled under the Slytherin name. After all, one of his main reasons for wanting to pretend to have been a Potter cousin had been for the possible living arrangement it could have provided.</p><p>His visit there takes several hours and has some disappointing results. Not one to admit defeat easily, Harry sets out to the HM Land Registry, a company with no official affiliation with the ministry that should hopefully be able to help him.</p><p>The visit there is more successful, and Harry returns to the tiny room that he is now paying for with Knuts instead of work with a lot on his mind.</p><p>Five days later he is standing in Agatha’s office, holding his very own citizenship pass in his hands. It is a thin plague of indeterminate metal that feels incredibly light to hold, or that might just be all the stress leaving his body now that he can actually hold on to the physical evidence he is registered in the ministry database.</p><p>Agatha is talking to him, but he hasn’t heard a word of it since she so casually handed him the key to legal employment and a better future in his hands after all this time.</p><p>“- and of course we can’t register nicknames, so we took the liberty of changing that for you. We weren’t sure of you birth name but assumed it to be the full version of the nickname you are so fond of and registered you as Harrison Slytherin. Not that it will prevent you from still using the nickname same as ever, but you might want to take more care when signing official documents.”</p><p>A closer look at the plaque reveals that his name has indeed been changed Harrison, but Harry can’t honestly find it in himself to care all that much. It is a small price to pay.</p><p>*</p><p>*</p><p>Today Harry is visiting a Baroness. He tries not to worry about it too much, but as he gets closer and closer the Lady Ostara Dawn’s house his stomach starts to turn.</p><p>He had looked at lists of properties that at one point might have been owned by the Slytherin family, but Agatha was right in saying it would indeed be hard to make a case of reclaiming any of those now, and while there are rumours and legends of a Slytherin Castle, its location has longs since been lost in time. There were only three properties that he managed to find that could potentially claimed and had enough evidence that if he took it to court he had a shot at winning.</p><p>I would have been easier if he had money for a solicitor, but since it’s just him he’s pretty stoked he managed to find anything at all. The first of the properties turned out to be in the possession of the Malfoy family, the plot their current manor is being built on in fact, and they’d probably sooner kill themselves than hand that over to him. The second plot was owned by the Fawley family, and it had taken Harry exactly ten minutes to find out that said family was richer than Merlin and could literally burry him in gold should he even glance at the direction of their home.</p><p>The third property was the most promising, only lived in by an elder widow called Ostara Dawn. Harry had been contemplating what to do about it and arguing between not wanting to kick an old lady out of her home and badly needing a place to live himself, when he received an owl from the woman in question, inviting him over for tea.</p><p>So now he was here. In front of large ornamental gates, managing to squash his nerves just before knocking.</p><p>The door is opened by an odd looking house elf wearing a dark blue tunic. “Welcome Mister Slytherin,” The elf says, leading Harry inside. “please follow me to the front door.”</p><p>He is lead through a front garden to the house on a winding path between trees and flower beds. Once the house comes in the view Harry can is immediately enraptured by the sight of it. It looks more like a castle than a house, half set into a cliffside and made of grey stone, with arched windows and little towers dotted over the place as if it’s going out of style. The walk to the front door is surprisingly short and leaves Harry with little time to take in all the details of the imposing building in front of him.</p><p>“<em>Oh don’t mind me, I’m just the door knocker. Not like I’m the one that is supposed to be opening this door. Oh no, you’re welcome to put your grubby little paws all over it. Business as usual I suppose.</em>” The snake on the ornately carved wooden door whines as the house elf opens the door for Harry to step inside.</p><p>“<em>Leaves you with more time for sunbathing if nothing else.</em>” Harry says rather drolly.</p><p>There is a short moment in which the snake stops its displeased wiggling about and looks at Harry with the most comically surprised look Harry has ever seen on a snake.</p><p>“<em>So it is true! A real Slytherin again, oh you have no idea how happy I am to see you.</em>” The snake wiggles in excitement and then just… lifts of the door and stretches out to Harry. Harry catches the thing before it can fall to the ground and the little wooden creature winds around his arm immediately, hissing in excitement.</p><p>“<em>It will be so good to have a real Slytherin back living here again, it has been such a long time.</em>” The little snake says eagerly, as it either hugs or tries to strangle Harry’s arm. It feels very heavy, and not like wood at all, despite the appearance of it.</p><p>When Harry looks up there is a woman standing there. She looks in her late fifties, but Harry knows that means very little in this wizarding world. She could easily be 700 years old. The only lace he can see on her black and dark purple robes is a thin line on the sleeve hems, which makes Harry like her immediately.</p><p>She smiles at Harry politely, but with a sharp assessing gaze. “Well, the whole house is very excited you are here, I am Ostara Dawn, now please stop dawdling outside and step in. Come on young man, I won’t bite. Welcome to Equinox Keep.”</p><p>She leads Harry into the house towards the parlour at a slow pace, which Harry is glad for since the she hadn’t been lying when she said the house was excited to see him. Snakes of all species and materials seem to make themselves lose from where they were to greet Harry. A large one separates itself from the banister to follow Harry as they walk, several others free themselves from picture frames and chandeliers, hissing in elation when Harry reaches out to pet them.</p><p>Lady Dawn’s robes swish behind her softly as she leads on, seemingly unbothered by the way her house is reacting to Harry’s presence or the impressive number of snakes that seem to be in her house.</p><p>When he sits down on the small couch opposite to Lady Dawn any remaining space is quickly filled with snakes and leaves him very little manoeuvring space.</p><p>“<em>You will be staying here from now on, right?</em>”</p><p>“<em>Of course he will, don’t be stupid.</em>”</p><p>“<em>I’m not stupid! And what would you know, you’re a</em> grass snake.”</p><p>“<em>What is that supposed to mean? You think you’re better than me just because you have venom? Remind me again which one of us is carved on the baseboards of all things.</em>”</p><p>“<em>You will be staying here, right</em>.” Another snake cuts in, followed by a chorus of other snakes expressing a similar sentiment.</p><p>“<em>I don’t know yet</em>.” Harry allows “<em>I certainly would like to, but the house is not currently owned by me, so I’m hoping to come to an arrangement with Lady Dawn</em>.”</p><p>“<em>We could always kill her</em>.” A small snake curling around his ankle offers casually. “<em>Then you could take the house, right?</em>”</p><p>“<em>That won’t be necessary</em>.” Harry says quickly before more snakes can pick up on that idea. He has become more comfortable with violence and even death as a solution to certain problems as he got older, but it would never be the first option. Especially not in a situation like this.</p><p>When he looks up Lady Dawn is looking at him with dark eyes but an unreadable expression as she sips her tea. Harry sees another cup pored for him and he reaches for it, but before he can move too much the tail of a snake curls around the saucer and carries it towards him. Harry takes a careful sip and then shushes the snakes so Lady Dawn can actually hear him when he speaks.</p><p>“My apologies, they were very insistent. I did not mean any offence towards you.” Harry offers, knowing full well that ignoring the woman this long could have been taken as a grave insult.</p><p>“No offence taken,” Lady Dawn says mildly, putting down her cup and blinking slowly. “it is a rather unusual situation.”</p><p>Harry hums in agreement and takes a sip of his tea as he openly studies his host. She looks slightly older than the usual agelessness that most of the people here had about them. There are a few wrinkles mixed in with the laughing-lines on her face and a few strands of grey in the braided up-do she wears her dark hair in.</p><p>Clearly not shy, she looks right back at him, and if Harry had been the kind of person who got uncertain about his looks he probably would have been. He is well aware that even the semi decent clothing he is wearing are subpar to what the woman in front of him is used to, and that he hasn’t had a proper shower since he got out of Saint Mungo’s. The snakes on and around him do not seem to care about his appearance though, and Lady Dawn clearly has a good poker face that Harry would never know if she disapproved.</p><p>“I came to live at The Equinox Keep around four hundred years ago. My late husband thought the name was fitting with ours you see. It hadn’t been lived in for a long time before that, so there was some restoration to be done before we could move in, nothing major fortunately, mostly wallpaper and such things. I’m afraid to say there where quite a number of rugs that were unsalvageable.” Lady Dawn starts, keeping her tone casual but her eyes trained on him.</p><p>Harry makes a short noise as he sips his tea, trying to sound interested. He honestly couldn’t care less about some old rugs, even if they might have belonged to the Slytherin family at one point. He wasn’t sure why she was telling him about it in the first place.</p><p>“We thought that anything remaining of the Slytherin family had long since been stripped, the house had changed hands many times and while no one took up residence, everything not nailed to the walls or damaged enough to be worthless had been taken out and sold a long time ago. But after living here for several centuries I can say that while the object might have been lost, the Keep itself was constructed by your family and lost none of its spirit over time.”</p><p>The mass of snakes around Harry might not all fully understand the words Lady Dawn is saying, but still start sliding around Harry with a bit more emphasis.</p><p>“Many of the carvings and woodwork only revealed itself to me after I had lived here for almost two centuries. And even now there are some I don’t recognise.” She says with a nod to the snakes that still twist and dance around Harry in various states of excitement. “To be frank, this was a very wanted piece of property since it existed before the charter and ministry were in full function, it is not subjected to all ministerial laws in this country. The… permanent occupants however changed the minds of anyone who thought they could make use of that.”</p><p>“Until you and your husband.” Harry confirms, wondering what was so different about this Lady that the happy bunch around him had decided to spare her from their usual welcoming comity.</p><p>“Indeed. It seemed that some general respect and humility were a rather foreign concept to the previous owners.” She shrugs in a rather unladylike gesture. “I can’t honestly say my husband and I did anything unusual to endear the house to us.”</p><p>“Ah I see.”</p><p>She smiles, eyes crinkling in the corners, and looks a lot more human for it. “Truly a man of few words I see.”</p><p>“Just wondering why I am here, despite the history of your home there is no obligation on your side. The tea is lovely, but I doubt that is the only reason I am here.”</p><p>“It is not.” Lady Dawn says kindly before righting herself and taking a moment to poor tea. She does it manually, a gesture of respect that takes Harry by surprise. She hands the cup to the nearest snake with an amused smile who then caries it over to Harry.</p><p> “There are three main properties that could be proven to be of Slytherin ancestry.” She starts, “The Malfoys, who are building that ghastly new structure on their plot, the Fawleys, who have never been able to let anything go without a fight, and me. I am well aware that this property is one of the most easily proven to have belonged to the Slytherin family and that I am the easiest to – take on, so to say.” She eyes the snakes on Harrys lap pointedly.</p><p>“I currently do not have the funds to buy any property of this size, even without the history. Any offers I could make for Equinox Keep would be quite a few years in the future.”</p><p>Lady Dawn just nods “Perhaps now it is not a main priority of yours to live a property belonging to your family, but it will be some time in the future, when you are better established. And I have no doubt that will happen, you are a clever and resourceful young man from what I have gathered, and anyone who thinks your age will make you careless hasn’t been paying attention.”</p><p>Harry has no idea what kind of things people in these circles say about him, but apparently it includes them thinking him careless because he is young. He is just glad none of them found out where is staying currently, he doubts Lady Dawn would be as open to cooperation as she clearly is if she knew he was practically homeless instead of just living in a non-family property. She must be seriously underestimating how poor he is, but Harry isn’t about to clue her in anytime soon.</p><p> “I am an old woman, set in my ways, and I’d rather stay here until it is my time. My own family is old but has only come into money in the last few generations, so there is no family property other than this that I have known. So, I would be open to a... compromise of sorts.”</p><p>“A compromise that would consist of both of us living here.” Harry clarifies with a raised eyebrow.</p><p>“Perhaps,” she allows “or perhaps a transfer of property after my passing.”</p><p>That signals the start of the negotiations Harry was waiting for. He has no desire to kick an old woman out of her home, but his personal feelings are put on the back-burner as Lady Dawn makes her case with all the shrewdness of a professional lawyer. Harry tries to give as good as he gets, aided by the very evidence of his claim on this place crawling casually over his lap and shoulders.</p><p>He doesn’t let himself think about how he has no claim at all on this place in actuality.</p><p>An hour in the negotiations the diagrams and maps of the keep and surrounding lands come out, two hours in and just about any document Harry has with an official stamp on it has joined those on the table, and after three hours Harry finds himself looking at Lady Dawn’s birth certificate and her official statement of unwillingness to have children.</p><p>“No one will try to dispute your claim after my death.” She says showing him the signed statement that apparently is common among purebloods who do not want to have children to prevent any unwanted spells with a nature in fertility taking root. Harry blinks at it for a moment before returning to the current argument. “My claim is not the thing in question here, only whether you will give in gracefully or if I will have to make it public that Baroness Dawn is keeping me from my rightful family home.”</p><p>The negotiations break only for lunch and then continue until a house elf announces supper is ready. “We might actually be getting somewhere.” Lady Dawn says rather smugly as she delicately spears a piece of fruit with her fork. “Now that you have admitted that I at least have the full right of ownership until my natural death.”</p><p>“Strange,” Harry replies, taking care to employ all manners he knows during the meal “I don’t remember saying anything of the sort.”</p><p>“You will,” Dawn says loftily before starting to argue that, really, the house and the land are separate entities, and agreements that include the one doesn’t necessarily include the other.</p><p>Harry leaves not long after supper, with the negotiations barely halfway done and promises to return tomorrow. Lady Dawn says goodbye very warmly, looking a lot more awake than Harry feels. As he makes his way home to his little room Harry has to admit, for something so important the negotiations had been… surprisingly fun.</p><p>It takes two more days for a contract to be drawn up, and by then Harry is calling Lady Dawn by her first name and she has taken to calling him ‘Dear’. The contract itself is long, full of sub-clauses that have sub-clauses, but it essentially states that Ostara will indeed live in the Keep until her death, and that Harry will be her tenant until then, paying a symbolic amount each month until her death leaves him rightful owner.</p><p>He had given in on outright owning the Keep in favour of free meals from his new landlady and full use of her house elves, something that Ostara clearly hadn’t been expecting. Harry would ‘rent’ the North Wing as his private quarters, while Ostara retained full use of the South and West Wings for personal use. The East Wing was designated as common ground, most of the larger sitting, dining and receiving rooms as well as the main libraries being located there.</p><p>There were many clauses and sub-clauses that went into the eventuality of Harry having a family before Ostara’s death and how that would result in him also having use of the South Wing instead of his landlady. As well as endless writing of what would happen in the case of Ostara’s unnatural death.</p><p>The contract is signed and filed on a Thursday afternoon and by the next Friday evening Harry is moved in and having supper with his new house mate.</p><p>“If nothing else you liven up the place.” Ostara says dryly, deftly holding her chopsticks and picking up some of the noodles on her plate.</p><p>“They will get used to me in time.” Harry replies, frowning at his own uncooperative cutlery, ignoring the mass of snakes that are very happy that he will be staying and are trying to ‘assist’ him in eating.</p><p>“<em>You will not be defeated by so thin and limp a prey</em>.” A large python encourages Harry when he once more fails to actually pick up any food from his plate.</p><p>“<em>It is not the food that escapes me, it’s the use of the utensils</em>.” Harry grumbles quietly, pretending not to notice how Ostara is very hard not-laughing.</p><p>“<em>Then use others, you have a more useful body for picking thing up than we.</em>”</p><p>A small, daring, snake crawls onto Harry’s plate and curls part of his body around a bundle of noodles, and then clearly sets out to feed it to Harry, who can only sigh. He tries to tell them that he wants to hunt his own prey, but they are very insistent and Harry despairs that he told them his age. It seems that in this world anything below fifty is considered a child and with is barely thirty years he’s practically a baby. He’s not really helping his own case by not being able to feed himself.</p><p>Eventually Ostara seems to take pity on him and charms his chopsticks in assisting Harry when his grip is incorrect.</p><p>“Couldn’t you have done that from the start?” Harry grouses.</p><p>“Could have” Ostara replies cheerfully, “But then I would have had to find my entertainment elsewhere.”</p><p>After dinner they both retire to their own wings, and Harry sets out to get better acquainted with his accommodations. He had known the insane number of bedrooms, sitting rooms, and clawed bathtubs his new accommodation holds when he signed the contract, but that is different from seeing it himself.</p><p>He wanders around for a long time, lightly guided by the snakes that crawl out of the woodwork and follow him on the windowsills. Everything is only furnished with the bare minimum, anything personal from Ostara and her family having been removed when the contract was signed, and it’s a bit strange to look at empty portrait frames, but not as disturbing as Harry thought it might be.</p><p>Eventually he settles on making the largest tower his main living quarters. There might be some fondness left over for living in towers from his time in Gryffindor, and the tower houses a large bedroom which a house elf (a rather mouthy one called Misty) confirms will do as a Master Suite, with attached bathroom, sitting area and a study and small library on a higher floor.</p><p>With the fire roaring and sitting at one of the curved windows overlooking a large part of the land that is now his Harry can finally let himself relax. Guilt washes over him for a bit, most of it is over how <em>easy</em> it is to pretend to be Slytherin. Even the snakes…</p><p>Harry lets himself have a few moments of guilt and apprehension, before boxing it all away and focussing on more practical matters.</p><p>He’ll start on doing something better for the defences of the place tomorrow, as the contract said he could. The current defences and wards are probably superb for this world, but rather laughable when compared to what Harry is used to.</p><p>Harry keeps himself busy over the next few weeks, updating wards, arguing with Ostara, doing more paperwork, writing letters, getting to know his new house, trying to keep the snakes in the house from following him everywhere, haranguing the ministry, trying to find employment, and contemplating getting an owl to make all this communication easier.</p><p>He sighs in relief as he manages to find a – well, it’s not an actual job, but something he gets money for it at least. There is an exceedingly wealthy pet shop franchise owner by the name of Fiacre Mejia willing to pay him a ‘token amount’ to floo over and look at or talk to several snakes. It is a weekly thing that takes Harry only an hour, most of which is taken up by the man bowing and chatting at him rather than the snakes. It is only because the man truly seems to care about the animals and because the ‘token amount’ totals more gold in one week than Harry has seen in a long time, that he subjects himself to be fawned over so regularly.</p><p>Adjusting to life with his new landlady is going much smoother than he had thought it would. It doesn’t take long for Harry to start suspecting that the woman might have been a bit lonely. Only a little lonely, mind, she clearly likes her privacy and her own time just fine. But enough that a houseguest is not as off-putting to her as it might have to others of her standing. They often eat breakfast and dinner together, and sometimes take tea. She is an excellent conversation partner and unwitting guide to upper-class customs.</p><p>She also is quite well versed in politics and is on a few committees and commissions herself, Harry has no doubt she can debate with the best of them. She could truly turn everything a debate, and Harry better come prepared with facts and figures if he wants her to respect his opinion. She can be rather direct for someone of her standing, which Harry guesses doesn’t make her very popular in certain circles, but he himself is only glad for her candour.</p><p>Walking around the grounds and gardens together becomes a thing after living there for a while, as well as playing board and mind games, though Harry enjoys their walks more than the other two.</p><p>“Now, over there by that spruce, that is where he was stabbed. It was rather funny at the time to be honest, I was much younger and thought the whole ritual hilarious of course. It took much longer than it should have to realise someone had actually been hurt.”</p><p>“Well, it was a Malfoy. And it’s not like they could prosecute your husband for it, this being independent land and all.” Harry says, as always feeling more as if he is hanging on her arm instead of the other way around as Ostara leads them to a bench overlooking the lake that belongs to their land.</p><p>“True, and all for that they’re rich and generally well thought of the Malfoys are a rather new family in this country. From France I believe. So really, he should have known better.” She says with a slight twist to her nose as if the mere thought of France conjures up a bed smell.</p><p>They sit down on the bench and a house elf brings them tea as Ostara fusses with her skirts a bit. She wears the same odd style as many of the upper-class Ladies Harry has seen in this world do, just with less lace. It is a curious amalgamation of robes and a dress, worn with a bodice on top accenting the waist. It is very different from the types of clothing women in the lower or even middle classes wear, who favour pinafore like garments instead of a bodice to cover their dresses. He also hasn’t seen any upper-class woman wearing pants yet, something that is very common in the lower and middle class, even if usually partially covered by a long shirt or tunic. All of it is very different from what was common in Harry’s old world anyway.</p><p>“Common dear, eat up, you’re much too thin as it is.” She says, shoving several pastries at Harry. He had been here for several months now and their friendship had developed quickly, since a while she would occasionally do this, treat him as a child. Which was… not terrible. It made him think of Molly Weasley to be honest. “And how is that Lordship coming along, did you have a reply from the Overseeing Oversight Committee yet?”</p><p>“Not yet. It seems that my letters keep going missing.”</p><p>“Hmp, well, I talked to Margaret, from the Backlog Befuddlement Board, remember I told you about her, and she said that your plan B would be much easier to prove. Mind you, she said that very much off the record so don’t go jumping into anything without looking.”</p><p>“Ah, perhaps. Would it really be such a different thing to go with plan B? It would be essentially be the same, wouldn’t it.”</p><p>“Oh not at all, peerage is a strange thing, take that from a Baroness, and one Lord or Lady isn’t necessarily of the same rank as another. Some families even have their head addressed as things like Paterfamilias Bullstrode, Materfamilias Prewitt, oh, and I used to go to school with Antoinette who is now to be addressed as Matriarch Greengrass. But even when not taking family into account the whole thing can be rather tricky.”</p><p>“Definitely.” Harry agrees “If only because of the paperwork.”</p>
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